..: ..-- 



' 



DO THEY REALLY 



RESPECT US? 



ESSAYS^ 






MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM 



DO THEY 
REALLY RESPECT US? 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 

BY 

MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM 

AUTHOR OF 

STORIES OF THE FOOT-HILLS 



SAN FRANCISCO 

A. M. ROBERTSON 
1912 



V 



COPYRIGHT 

1911 

BY A. M. ROBERTSON 



1*^ 



Taylor, Nash & Taylor 
San Francisco 



©CIA303345 



Lovingly Dedicated to 
Marian Osgood Hooker 



PREFACE 

Many friends have asked that a 
sketch of the author's life be included 
in this posthumous volume, but the 
editors believe that the following 
whimsical "Autobiography" will be 
more satisfactory, as being from Mrs. 
Graham's own pen, than any account 
of their own: 

I was born in 1850, but this is only hearsay 
and I hope exaggerated. I have lived ever 
since though I have been half dead at times. I 
have lived a good deal and have found it, on 
the whole, interesting. I have lived in Cali- 
fornia since 1876 and have in consequence no 
desire to go to heaven. I have been in love and 
in debt many times but have always got out. 
I am afraid of nothing but the newspapers. I 
have found one thing worth while: friends. 
And I deeply regret that I have not been able 
to give the world as much pleasure as it has 
given me. 

Although Mrs. Graham was most 
widely known as a writer of short 



Preface stories, her public addresses have 
made her name deeply respected in 
Southern California; and in private 
life her practical wisdom and ready 
sympathy helped many men and wo- 
men to go their ways more happily. 
She practiced a philosophy more 
stern than she preached, putting aside 
afflictions grievous enough to daunt 
the bravest. 

A perusal of the following pages 
will show that Mrs. Graham's atten- 
tion was strongly attracted to the 
almost dramatic transformations that 
have made the world of today so 
different from that of her youth, so 
different, especially, for women. The 
reader who has observed how far a 
few years have carried us socially 
from the last generation will find some 
aspects of that long swift march here 
accounted for, perhaps in a new light, 
by a keen observer, often humorously 
and always sympathetically. A few 
of the papers are on literary topics, but 
literature and life were so inseparable 
in their author's view that these selec- 



tions will be found as full of human Preface 
interest as the rest. All of the papers 
are occasional ; some of them were pre- 
pared for small companies of friends, 
others for large audiences, but none 
of them for publication. It was only 
the requests of many who heard them 
that finally decided their author to re- 
vise a few for printing. But Mrs. 
Graham's last years were filled with 
pain, and although she refused to sur- 
render to invalidism her strength suf- 
ficed only for immediate affairs. Nev- 
ertheless she sometimes mentioned 
the proposed volume, and it is be- 
lieved that her intention has been 
fairly represented. 

Mrs. Graham was especially 
touched by the devotion of one of her 
young friends who carefully copied 
and bound the papers here printed, 
and many others. The dedication of 
this volume is a recognition of that 
attachment and is indeed the only de- 
tail which the author had definitely 
planned. 

There has been no attempt to edit 



Preface the manuscript other than to remove 
a few ephemeral local allusions, intro- 
ductory words and certain passages 
that repeat others found elsewhere. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Do They Really Respect Us? .... 1 

Social Mendicants 27 

Some Immortal Fallacies 53 

A New Point of View 79 

The Modern Heroine 102 

The Way to Altruria 125 

A Matter of Conscience 152 

Why Pity the Poor? 178 

Earning Her Bread — and Jam .... 185 

The Virtue of Hatred 193 

Rights and the Right 198 

High Notions 204 

Just After Christmas 208 

How to Read Fiction 215 

The Historical Novel 236 

What Is an Immoral Novel? 244 

If I Were 258 



DO THEY REALLY RESPECT 

US? 

From the beginning of civilization 
men have said complimentary things 
of women. From the last chapter of 
Proverbs to the last issue of the daily 
paper we find no lack of pleasant 
sayings in appreciation of womanly 
virtues. Indeed this seems to have 
been a very early custom, for nothing 
is said of the return made to the vir- 
tuous woman of Biblical repute, by her 
admiring husband, save that "he 
praises her." This, it appears, has 
been the coin in which women have 
been paid for self-sacrifice from the 
beginning of time. 

Now compliment is not the lan- 
guage of equality. There is a sugges- 
tion of compensation, or at the best, 
solace for deprivation in it. Men do 
not indulge much in it toward each 
other without arousing suspicion. 

1 



Do They I remember, when a very young 
RespecTus g ir ^> hearing a man say, apropos of the 
departure of some woman from the 
conventional feminine industrial rut, 
"I am sure no one respects a woman 
more than I do, in her proper place"! 
It had not occurred to me to doubt 
it before, but the seed thus sown 
sprouted, and skepticism concerning 
the respect of man has ever since flour- 
ished in my mind. 

Really I think the pleasant things 
which most men say and no doubt 
think they think concerning women 
are the result of kindly feeling. Her 
lot seems to them so unendurable, her 
condition so unspeakable, that they 
are constrained to offer her such con- 
solation as lies in their power for the 
unfairness of fate. Women never find 
it necessary to assert, much less to in- 
sist that they respect men as a sex. 
Possibly they are more truthful than 
men, but it is evident that, whatever 
may be the cause, men do not suffer 
from this lack of appreciation. 

Do not, I pray, misunderstand me. 



I am quite willing to acknowledge Do They 
that men love women, and I know that Respect Us 
it is often said that there can be no 
real love without respect. This lat- 
ter statement we all know to be false. 
Mothers and fathers love their chil- 
dren without feeling for them any- 
thing approaching deference ; parental 
affection is a mixture of pity, tender- 
ness, hope, pride and selfishness. 
Sometimes one of these predominates, 
sometimes another; but in any case 
the love is real, without a trace of 
respect. 

When a woman is young she tries 
hard to believe that men mean what 
they say, but as she grows older and 
the compliments become rarer she 
realizes, if at all astute, that it is not 
woman that man respects, in spite of 
his protestations, but himself. Just 
in so far as a woman ministers to his 
comfort, convenience and progress, he 
respects, or says he respects her. 
When she disregards this and seeks, 
as he always claims the right to do, 
her own advancement, convenience 



Do They and development, regardless of his, 
RespectUs sne immediately forfeits his "respect," 
as he chooses to call it. 

Of course there has always been 
the church to reckon with in the atti- 
tude of men toward women; for in 
spite of the boasted claim that Chris- 
tianity and the advancement of wo- 
man have gone hand in hand, the 
church has always taught directly the 
inferiority of woman. As Christianity 
is thus far the best religion civilization 
has produced, and as woman has pro- 
gressed with civilization, just as might 
has yielded to right in other quarters, 
the advance of woman and the prog- 
ress of Christianity have kept pace; 
but not through direct religious teach- 
ing; that, in spite of the efforts of the 
modern liberal ministry to disguise 
the fact, has always been outspokenly 
on the side of man's supremacy and 
the subjection of woman. We can un- 
derstand therefore, the attitude of the 
theologian on this subject and extend 
to it such consideration as we may 
individually feel for theology. It is no 



doubt even today, though indirectly, Do They 
an important factor in public opinion, Respect Us 
or rather public prejudice; and many 
a man who has long since deserted the 
creed of the church, is a devout be- 
liever in her teaching still. Not God 
has decreed it, he says, but Nature. 

To exchange for one week his life 
of freedom, of initiative, of activity 
for her parasitic, irresponsible, "pro- 
tected" existence would be to him un- 
bearable, and the only excuse which 
the average man finds for such rank 
injustice is in making himself think 
that "women are different, " have 
different tastes and instincts. "A 
mother's arm," the callow newspaper 
reporter assures us, "never tires"; "the 
heart of a true woman clings more 
closely to her husband the more 
cruelly he abuses her"; and other like 
fictions find, even in sensible men, seri- 
ous consideration, not to say belief. 

As a matter of fact women and 
men, save for the different tactics in- 
spired by different economic relations, 
love and hate for the same reasons. 



Do They A man's arm grows tireless when his 
Respect Us baby's life depends upon its strength. 
A woman kisses the fist that fells her 
if that same fist is to her the only 
source of supply; but as for loving it 
— do not deceive yourselves, my 
brothers, and do not wonder that she 
is restless under dependence which 
would gall you beyond endurance, for 
she is made of the same stuff as your- 
selves. 

Try just for a little to apply to her 
the same test you apply to yourselves. 
How frequently we hear it asserted 
that a poor man who marries a rich 
woman is placed in a most humiliating 
position. If marriage were what it 
should be this would not be true; but 
since it is what it is, why is not the 
position of the poor woman who mar- 
ries a rich man, or a man who be- 
comes rich, equally humiliating? She 
may strive by a thousand fallacies and 
mental evasions to escape from the 
consequences, but she cannot. Men 
do not respect dependence, and wo- 
men seem to them dependent. Gen- 



erally speaking they are right. They Do They 
have my sympathy in the lack of re- Respect Us 
spect, but not in their effort to main- 
tain the conditions which produce it, 
nor in their effort to deceive them- 
selves and her. 

As we grow older we cease to blink 
the facts. We allow ourselves the 
privilege of saying what we think. 
And for some months I have inter- 
ested myself in gathering together 
evidence bearing upon this matter. 
Much of it is circumstantial but often 
it is refreshingly frank, even ingenu- 
ous, and very direct. The following 
I take from a daily paper. 

THE MOTHERS. 

No organized body of people could be more 
welcome in Los Angeles than the Mothers' 
Congress. Perhaps it would not be too much 
to say that this organization is the most wel- 
come of any that might come. For, of all the 
people in the world, there are none to compare 
with the mothers in our affections, our grati- 
tude and our respect. 

This sounds very well. No doubt the 
man who wrote it believed he was tell- 

7 



Do They ing the truth. But one finds it hard 
RespectUs to reconcile with the universal mascu- 
line contempt bestowed upon "a 
mother's boy," "a boy tied to his 
mother's apron string"; and a child- 
less woman finds her loneliness tem- 
pered by the supercilious attitude of 
the callow youth toward everything 
feminine: an attitude carefully fos- 
tered too often by his father, for boys, 
let us hope, are not born into the world 
with a contempt for the women who 
bear them. 

That this contempt is acquired at a 
very early age, however, we must 
acknowledge. A woman calling upon 
a stranger asked the number of her 
hostess' children. "I have four little 
boys," was the answer. "Oh," said 
the visitor sympathetically, "one of 
your little boys should have been a lit- 
tle girl!" Whereupon one of the 
small male quartette who was sitting 
unnoticed in a corner grumbled, "I'd 
like to know who'd a been 'er! I 
wouldn't a been 'er, and Tom wouldn't 
a been 'er, and I'm sure Jack wouldn't ! 

8 



I'd like to know who'd a been 'er!" Do They 
A small boy who had two older sisters Respect Us 
was congratulated upon the arrival of 
a little brother and asked if he were 
glad. "Yes," he said, "if he hadn't 
come there wouldn't have been any- 
body but just me ! " One could repeat 
such stories ad nauseam to prove the 
early development of sex contempt on 
the part of boys. 

Little girls on the contrary show 
no corresponding aversion unless now 
and then when teased. "Tomboy" is 
not considered a severe form of re- 
proach, in spite of the efforts of 
grownups, and "a whistling girl" is 
always rather proud of her accom- 
plishment; little girls take kindly to 
overalls, and gymnasium suits are not 
abjured because they make girls look 
like boys. It is useless to say that this 
is merely natural sex prejudice; that 
the contempt is mutual; that the man 
dislikes womanly traits in a man be- 
cause they are unmanly; that the 
terms "effeminate," "womanish," etc., 
are terms of reproach only when ap- 

9 



Do They plied to men; and that the same re- 
RespecTus proach is involved in the application 
of terms suggestive of manly charac- 
teristics to woman. This is not true. 
No woman considers it other than a 
compliment to be told that she has a 
"virile" intellect, that she "writes like 
a man"; and no man who tells her this 
intends it otherwise. To ascribe any 
masculine mental trait to a woman is 
perhaps the highest form of compli- 
ment indulged in by men. 

We hear much talk in some quar- 
ters of the danger which lurks in the 
feminization — whatever that may be 
— of various institutions and indus- 
tries. That men should be molded or 
governed according to the feminine 
idea seems to some of the alarmed 
denizens of these quarters a catastro- 
phe which must result in the destruc- 
tion of all that is distinctively mascu- 
line. If this be true, woman herself 
has been up to this time suffering from 
masculinization. She has been edu- 
cated and governed according to the 
masculine idea. She has tried with 

10 



man's assistance to make herself what Do They 
he desires. The reward of merit held RespJctUs 
out to her has always been his ap- 
proval; the direst calamity that could 
befall her to fail of his esteem. She 
has been urged to model herself mind 
and body upon his wishes. The result 
has been that anomaly believed to be 
the womanly woman but in reality the 
masculinized woman; the woman not 
as God made her but as man has made 
her. Man, who is so afraid of femin- 
ization that he cannot trust his deli- 
cate and susceptible nature in the 
same classroom with women without 
jeopardizing his mental sex, has not 
hesitated to subject her presumably 
more sensitive intelligence to endless 
counsels, dictation and warning, until 
we have every reason to believe that 
the original woman has entirely dis- 
appeared. 

Having in early life observed this 
universal contempt for femininity, I 
set about seeking the cause. Naturally, 
since physical inferiority as a reason 
was hardly to be predicated of civil- 

11 



Do They ized man, I decided that in the process 
Respecfus °f evolution we had not yet reached 
mental equality with men. Indeed in 
my youth there were those who ven- 
tured to assert that women were nat- 
urally inferior. To dispel this, of 
course women set about improving 
themselves. The matter seemed sim- 
ple enough : "They do not respect us," 
I said, "because we are ignorant; 
when we acquire learning it will be 
otherwise." Imagine then my sur- 
prise to learn, as I did recently, that 
the disrespect for femininity is far 
deeper seated than this; to read in a 
well-known and highly respectable 
magazine the following: 

It is the general opinion of educational ex- 
perts that in the higher schools more men 
teachers are needed. This is not because the 
pupils of men teachers pass better examina- 
tions than the pupils of women teachers ; it is 
because the masculine element is needed in the 
educational community; because, for example, 
the average boy, if he is taught only by women, 
comes to regard scholarship as a purely fem- 
inine accomplishment and look upon it with 
something like contempt. 

12 



This was in the Outlook. Do They 

In other words instead of feminine Respect Us 
scholarship increasing the boy's re- 
spect for women, it merely gave him a 
contempt for scholarship ! This would 
certainly indicate a sex-antipathy far 
deeper seated than we have supposed. 
It has been the fashion, in America 
at least, to disguise this condition of 
affairs; but now and then even the 
American man "speaks up." Witness 
that representative of the New York 
Schoolmen who appeared before the 
Legislature at Albany to oppose the 
McCarren-Conklin bill for equal pay 
for equal work on the part of women 
teachers. There is a refreshing frank- 
ness in the way in which he cast aside 
all this hollow mockery of compliment 
and gave twelve reasons against equal- 
izing salaries, the first of which was 
"his own personal superiority to any 
woman" ! Other minor reasons were : 
that "no woman can uplift spiritually 
nor can she come up to man's ideals" ; 
that "women have done nothing for 
education"; that "equal work means 

13 



Do They equal ability"; that "men exert a 
RespecTus man's influence, while a woman can 
exert only a woman's influence"; etc. 
It is said that the senators and repre- 
sentatives gasped as they listened to 
him, whether from surprise at his 
statements or at his candor we are not 
informed. The editor of the maga- 
zine from which I learned these facts 
says in conclusion: "Respect for wo- 
men is one of the first things to be in- 
culcated in the American boy, since 
respect for women is a quality which 
springs from the American ideal, and 
one of which Americans have always 
been justly proud." 

The means taken to inculcate this 
respect are various. I read the other 
day in a serious article on Longfellow 
written by a well-known scholar that, 
"he had an exasperating way of ob- 
serving certain conventional duties 
like an old woman." Did any woman 
ever dream of using the expression, 
"like an old man," as a term of re- 
proach to be applied to one of her own 
sex? 

14 



Women, I must confess, assume a Do They 
cheerful callousness to this form of RespJctUs 
habitual contempt, even though by no 
means indifferent to it. Some of them 
share it, or pretend to share it in a 
very palpable effort to appear "virile." 
There is no way in which a weak wo- 
man is more likely to try to strength- 
en her position with men than by slurs 
upon her own sex — not upon individu- 
als, that is always ascribed to jealousy 
and is a tacit compliment to masculin- 
ity, but upon women. And the fact that 
she gains with men by underrating 
women proves that at heart men do 
not respect women. 

Why is it the crowning disgrace 
of a small boy's existence to be mis- 
taken for a girl? Why are girls' 
clothes considered a by-word and a 
scoffing? Why does so sincere and 
gentle a writer as Benson say, "What 
a wretched thing in English it is that 
there is no female of the word 'man' ! 
'Woman' means something quite dif- 
ferent and always sounds slightly dis- 
respectful"? Why do we hear it said 

15 



Do They repeatedly that it is a great pity for 
RespectUs a S 1T ^ to t> e plain, but that good looks 
in a man are rather undesirable than 
otherwise? Is personal appearance, 
then, a woman's entire stock in trade? 
Are men so stupid as not to see the 
covert insult in this, and are women so 
hardened to insult as not to feel it? 

The average Englishman's posi- 
tion in this matter is easy to under- 
stand. An interesting series of arti- 
cles in Nineteenth Century and 
After, contains some statements 
which have the merit of frankness if 
not of modesty. The articles are on 
the subject of political representation. 
American men, certainly the educated 
class, however opposed to the exten- 
sion of the suffrage to women, are al- 
ways ready to assert that when wo- 
men desire it, the right should be 
granted to them. But this English- 
man removes all coating of sugar from 
the bitter pill; after setting forth the 
position of the opposition thus: 

They welcome the exercise, more and more, 
of consultative and advisory functions, by rea- 

16 



sonable and thoughtful women, in the coun- Do They 

try's concerns ; they welcome the presentation Really 

c i ,i ,• r j- xvespect Us 

of grievances and the suggestion of remedies 

by those toiling thousands of women upon 

whom rests so much of the physical burthen 

of life. But they are convinced that the last 

word in all these matters ought to rest with 

men — even as God has made man "the head 

of the woman." 

He adds: 

Lastly (if I may presume to give my im- 
pressions in that respect), I believe that the 
great majority of Englishmen would, for 
their part, hold these views if the question of 
women's suffrage were fairly and squarely put 
before them. Miss Stephen suggests a Refer- 
endum to women. It would be interesting, 
but I do not think it ought to be decisive. My 
whole contention is that the matter is for men 
to decide, whether by Referendum or by our 
old-fashioned method of a General Election. 
If I am right in believing my countrymen are 
against women's suffrage, I earnestly hope 
they will have the courage of their convictions, 
and resist it, no matter with what volume of 
female voices it may be demanded. 

Even a woman can understand this. 
And even an American woman real- 
izes the futility of interfering with 
God, however much she may object to 

17 



Do They acknowledging that an Englishman 
RespecTus * s better acquainted with the Al- 
mighty's intentions concerning her 
than she is herself. But candidly 
there is something to take hold of in 
such statements. They help a woman 
to know where she is. The theory and 
practice of the Englishman seem per- 
fectly consistent, whereas those of her 
own countrymen are full of bewilder- 
ing contradictions. Do you wonder 
that at times she accuses the latter of 
duplicity and longs to get at his real 
convictions? 

Personally I believe I am actuated 
in this investigation by purely scien- 
tific motives. I do not say that I 
should be guided by male opinion, but 
it would be interesting to know what 
it is. Why is womanhood esteemed a 
curse? Is it because men are at heart 
physical cowards and shrink from the 
suffering that accompanies mater- 
nity? I cannot believe it. Is it be- 
cause of the limitations which they 
have so constantly urged upon wo- 
men? Then why in the name of 

18 



justice are they not eager so far as Do They 
in them lies to remove those limita- Respect Us 
tions? 

I read somewhere recently the 
statement by a man who represented 
a fair literary average, that if one 
could get at the truth there was not a 
man living who did not consider him- 
self the superior of any woman, 
merely by virtue of his sex. I can 
imagine that men might find it em- 
barrassing to confess this, and might 
hide their embarrassment under a 
pretended flippancy; but I cannot 
imagine why, since sex is not a matter 
of choice, they should be so cruelly in- 
different to the disadvantages which 
beset femininity; should seem to try 
to make themselves think that they 
have made up to women by certain 
privileges which would mean less than 
nothing to themselves: by granting 
them, in other words, immunity from 
everything which makes life worth 
living to them. 

There has always been to me 
something incomprehensible in the 

19 



Do They anxiety of men to avoid everything, 
RespecTus no matter how strong their taste 
therefor, which savors of the taint of 
woman's work. Not long ago a man 
whose eyes troubled him and made it 
impossible for him to follow his pro- 
fession of architecture closely, or to 
read or write constantly, who was not 
strong enough and really did not care 
for outdoor sports, and who was not 
obliged to earn a living, confessed to 
me that he envied women their many 
forms of tasteful handicraft. He did 
not say it, but both of us knew, that 
he was prevented only by the reproach 
attending it from acquiring and prac- 
tising one of these household arts. 

The good qualities generally as- 
cribed to men, when found in women 
are always highly esteemed. Courage, 
a judicial mind, self-reliance, chivalry, 
even physical bravery and, in these 
days, athletic skill are much lauded in 
women. But I believe most men con- 
sider it at best a doubtful compliment 
to be accused of gentleness, of tender- 
ness, of self-sacrifice, of modesty, of 

20 



pure mindedness, of personal virtue, Do They 
or indeed of any womanly trait. For- Respect Us 
tunately many men possess these 
qualities, and their shamefacedness 
concerning them is only a part of the 
sex-antipathy so strangely felt toward 
women, and apparently not by them. 

I am not blind to the logical con- 
clusion from all this. Men are sup- 
posed to be reasonable beings, and if 
they do not respect us no doubt they 
have their reasons. I know that some- 
one is lying in wait to tell me that we 
have brought this upon ourselves; 
that time was when womanhood was 
highly esteemed, etc. But this is not 
true. There has never been a time 
when gibes and sneers and manly con- 
tumely have not been showered upon 
everything pertaining to femininity. 
Indeed I am disposed to think that in 
America and today we fare better in 
this respect than in any place at any 
time in the history of civilization. The 
reasons for this condition of mind 
are not therefore of recent origin. 
Possibly they may be in the nature of 

21 



Do They things, but the fact that there has 
RespectUs been some change for the better in the 
attitude of man leads us to hope. And 
to do him justice I have at times felt 
that, all things considered, he is not 
entirely blamable. I have now and 
then seen what appeared to be, or at 
least to indicate, a praiseworthy effort 
on his part to mend his ways : like the 
man who, when fined for contempt of 
court, said, "Your honor, I have never 
expressed any contempt for this 
court; on the contrary I have care- 
fully concealed my feelings." Even 
this is hopeful; and when we consider 
some of the obstacles we have placed 
in his way, I am constrained to think 
he has done fairly well. 

I am willing to confess that if there 
were upon the earth a creature who 
was willing to give up her name, her 
occupation and her home for me; to 
let me decide her place of residence, 
her employment and her income; who 
allowed herself to be given to me by 
a religious form; who promised pub- 
licly to obey me — I might love her 

22 



(considering the direful strait she Do They 
must have been in to have come to Respect Us 
this, heaven knows I should try!), but 
by no superhuman effort of the will 
could I thoroughly respect her, or 
have for her any real feeling of equal- 
ity. If, added to this, I should see 
her mincing about on absurdly high- 
heeled shoes, wearing upon her head 
a tray of calico flowers and artificial 
poultry representing the fauna and 
flora of all climes, her bare arms and 
neck showing chill and blue through 
a film of lace — I am very certain that 
I should think disrespectful things 
even if I did not say them. 

Mr. Henry James (do not be 
alarmed: I am not going to quote 
him) speaks of the abdication of man 
in America, and the Nation in reply 
says some very true and rather morti- 
fying things concerning the social in- 
feriority of the American man or, 
more properly, concerning the social 
preeminence of the American woman. 
This latter, it is asserted, in no way 
reflects or proves anything as to the 

23 



Do They superior energy or acquirements of 
RespecTuI woman herself, but merely indicates 
"the first need of the industrial male 
conqueror, which is to display his 
financial power through conspicuous 
leisure." As he does not care for leis- 
ure himself, as he hates personal show 
and has no desire for travel and fine 
clothes, and as these are to the busi- 
ness-man only the means of displaying 
his success, he decks his womankind 
out and sends them forth to herald his 
financial triumph. If this is true, and 
it has an uncomfortable air of truth, it 
may also be true, as the article further 
states, that "male ascendancy is as 
real and at least as strong in America 
as in any European country short of 
Turkey." 

American men insist that they are 
proud of American women, and I can- 
not believe that in all of them this 
pride is merely a form of self-love; 
that their position is represented by 
the merchant who would disdain to 
make a display by arraying himself in 
his own wares, but does not hesitate to 

24 



fill his window with wax-figures thus Do They 
adorned. Assuredly there are in Respect Us 
America men who take a reasonable 
pride in the actual accomplishments 
of woman. I do not think many of 
them are afraid of being distanced in 
the mental or business world by her; 
indeed the fear they express is gen- 
erally that of woman's competition 
making it impossible for them to sup- 
port her in idleness: a consummation 
devoutly to be hoped for, and one 
which she certainly ought to welcome 
as preferable to supplying the need of 
"the industrial male conqueror" to 
display his financial power: a position 
hardly to be coveted by a self-respect- 
ing woman, and one not calculated to 
command the respect of man. 

Probably most of us get in this life 
what we deserve. We may inspire 
love, but we must compel respect; and 
possibly many of us, both men and 
women, are quite satisfied with love — 
prefer it, indeed. Yet so long as some 
men have both, I cannot but believe 
that there are many women who feel 

25 



Do They aggrieved that only one should be 
RespecTus within their reach. 

Possibly the respect of men is not 
unattainable. If it depends upon cir- 
cumstances over which they and we 
have no control it is really of little 
value; and if to acquire it we must, as 
sometimes appears, excite their envy, 
the question arises whether it is worth 
while, whether it is not better to be 
contented with our present discontent 
— to prefer being right to being presi- 
dent. This latter is, I think the state 
of mind of most "contented" women. 
But there is a large class who still feel 
a shock when they are brought face to 
face with the fact that nothing they 
can do or be will save them from per- 
petual insult based upon the mere fact 
of womanhood. 



26 



SOCIAL MENDICANTS 

It is much to be regretted that the 
Psalmist was in such haste when he 
said that all men are liars. While he 
was in the mood there were so many 
other equally true and forcible things 
that he might have said, things that 
are not considered exactly polite or 
even safe in our day, but which it 
would have been a great relief to have 
had said for us in terse and classic 
English upon which the copyright has 
long since expired. For instance, if 
he had not been pressed for time, he 
might have added that all women are 
beggars. 

Of course there are beggars and 
beggars; and for purposes of classifi- 
cation the gentler, weaker, more vir- 
tuous, beautiful and altogether su- 
perior — in short, the sex — might be 
divided into primary and secondary 
beggars. The primary beggars are a 

27 



Social small and very uninteresting class, 
who beg directly for themselves. It is 
as secondary beggars — beggars for 
others — that Woman rises to her full 
height, assumes, as it were, her larg- 
est and most imposing W. To put it 
more briefly, there is beggary as a 
curse and beggary as a career. It is 
to this latter point that I wish princi- 
pally to draw your attention. 

As soon as a true woman is certain 
she has escaped the curse she makes 
haste to enter upon the career. She 
begins, of course, with clothes, prefer- 
ably men's clothes; and, as usual, the 
brunt of her self-sacrifice falls heavily 
upon those nearest and dearest to her. 
She begs of her bachelor friends in a 
cursory intermittent way, necessarily 
limited by her knowledge of their 
wardrobes. But the husband of her 
heart — imagine the state of that man ! 
Time was when the frugal wife 
who leaned forward while her hus- 
band was telling her earnestly and 
with statesmanlike fervor of the 
workings of the League for Better 

28 



City Government, and lightly rubbed Social 

i r r 1' i j_ i Mendicants 

her forefinger over a slight abrasion on 
the elbow of his coatsleeve, aroused 
in her lord visions of a work-basket, a 
silver thimble and delicate and skilful 
darning while he read the evening 
paper with a crocheted afghan about 
his shoulders. But this was Solo- 
mon's time, not ours. The modern 
husband knows better. When the 
companion of his joys bends toward 
him and gently laying her hand upon 
his knee, where a scarcely perceptible 
gloss is beginning to manifest itself, 
says, "Thomas, don't you think this 
suit is beginning to look quite old and 
scuffed?" he knows that the fate of 
that suit is sealed. As a matter of fact 
it is not at all old; indeed it is just be- 
ginning to fit him comfortably. The 
aggressive newness has but just left it 
and the coat has acquired a graceful 
slouch about the shoulders that makes 
him feel quite like a millionaire. But 
none of these things move her. Re- 
sistance is worse than useless. Long 
experience has told him that that cov- 

29 



Mendicants 



Social etous glitter in his wife's eye can have 
but one result. The place that know- 
eth that coat now will soon know it no 
more forever. 

Of course a woman in this state of 
mind is bound to go from bad to 
worse. She that gloats over moth- 
holes in last winter's overcoats and re- 
joices wantonly in shrinkages caused 
by dyeing is never safe. It is but a 
short step from beggary to theft. 

I was informed no more than a 
month ago by an honorable gentle- 
man, a man who bears, one might 
say, a national reputation for veracity, 
that he had been prevented from at- 
tending numerous high social func- 
tions by the fact that the wife of his 
bosom had given away the trousers 
that belonged to his evening suit. I 
had often missed him from these 
scenes of mad festivity, but the real 
pathos of his absence had never ap- 
pealed to me before. This same suf- 
ferer, with a tear glistening on his eye- 
lash, told me also of another man, a 
friend of his, a retired army officer, 

30 



whose wife during a slight indisposi- Social 
tion of her husband that confined him Mendicants 
to his bed for a few days, had given 
away his entire wardrobe, thus reduc- 
ing him at one fell swoop to that desti- 
tution in which her philanthropic soul 
rejoiced. Whether she then went out 
and begged old clothes for him from 
other men I forgot to inquire, but I 
presume she did. 

There are men in this community, 
reputable and honest citizens, who 
clutch the lapels of their coats and 
dodge into alleys and around corners 
when they see certain benevolent per- 
sons approaching. Men have confided 
these things to me, not, I trust, be- 
cause I am unwomanly or lack the 
true feminine spirit, but because I live 
in the country, where poverty is un- 
known, where we spend the larger 
part of our time in humbly imploring 
the needy to come and work for us, 
and most of our income in paying 
them when they decide that it is too 
lonesome and return to the city — to 
be begged for by our urban sisters. 

31 



Social Being thus fortunately situated, I 
have never been known to ask a man 
for his cloak, thus arousing in him a 
fear that I would some day take his 
coat also; and as a consequence men 
have felt a degree of security concern- 
ing the temporary safety of their 
wardrobes in my presence, which has 
led to many piteous and touching 
recitals. 

Indeed at times we have mingled 
our tears, for, while most women have 
a preference for men's clothes — I beg 
you not to misunderstand me — there 
are exceptions, and I have at times 
trembled for the safety of a gown 
grown dear from long association. 
Only the other day I seated myself in 
a streetcar near a woman of well- 
known and deep-dyed philanthropy. 
I saw her start when I sat down, and 
fix her eyes upon my sleeves, which 
were, alas ! a season too large. And 
instantly I felt her rip those sleeves 
out and make of them two pairs of 
knee-pants for Mrs. Moriarty's twin 
boys. Then she leaned back a little, to 

32 



see if there was sufficient fullness in Social 
the skirt to warrant a hope of a waist en lcan s 
and petticoat for the second girl. And 
just as I was hesitating as to whether 
it was my duty to tell her that I had a 
yard and a half of the goods at home 
which the dressmaker had induced me 
to purchase for fear sleeves would in- 
crease in size, the conductor called my 
street. I gathered my skirts about me 
and scuttled past her as I left the car, 
and when I landed on the street and 
saw her still eyeing me greedily from 
the window, I felt that I had made, if 
not a hairbreadth, at least a front- 
breadth escape. No one knows, no one 
can know, what fear is until he has 
fathomed the benevolence of a thor- 
oughly good woman. 

It is not generally known that it is 
feminine dread of debt which lies at 
the basis of this universal beggary of 
women. All good women have a hor- 
ror of debt. Now with men debt is a 
pastime, an amusement. A man who 
is out of debt feels like a fish out of 
water. A man means to pay his debts, 

33 



Social of course, and very often he does. But 

Mendicants he doesn » t pay them until he has the 

money, or can borrow it. Now a 
woman pays her debts, in money if she 
can, if not she pays them in tears and 
blood. They are not her debts, she is 
theirs. 

It is to this belief of woman in the 
moral quality of debt that much mas- 
culine suffering is to be attributed. 
Possibly there is a business-man who 
would dare go home at night and say 
incidentally to his wife, "My dear, 
when I was in the bank today borrow- 
ing a couple of thousand dollars I saw 
..." etc. ; but I doubt it. He would 
shrink before the awful look of re- 
proach in that good woman's face. 
He would know that every evening 
thereafter she would look him in the 
eye and say, "Thomas, have you paid 
back that money?" All his assets 
would shrink into nothingness before 
that one appalling liability. What 
seemed to him at the time a trifling 
business exigency would come to ap- 
pear a crime, and by and by in sheer 

34 



self-defense he would go to another Social 



bank and borrow the money that he 
might pay the debt and answer her in 
the affirmative. 

Now, this wholesome horror of 
debt on the part of good women is the 
safety of the church and the bulwark 
of revealed religion. I trust you will 
bear with me, my sisters, while I eluci- 
date this matter. 

All churches, viewed from the out- 
side, are in a chronic state either of 
erecting a new edifice or paying for 
the old one. There must be a great 
deal of fun in building a church. I 
am assured of this because men show 
such a lively interest in it from the 
beginning, and men, generally speak- 
ing, are good fellows. There is no de- 
nying the fact that they are the hu- 
morous sex; they know how to have 
an all-round good time. 

First, there is selecting and buying 
the lot. There are agents and com- 
missions and abstracts and flaws and 
tax-titles and options and agreements 
and deeds and suits to quiet title — all 

35 



Mendicants 



Social of which have been the playthings and 
en icants amusemen t s f men from the begin- 
ning of time. Then there are the ar- 
chitects and the plans and specifica- 
tions, and the elevation (I notice the 
elevation always comes first and the 
depression later), and here even the 
women begin to see the fun. They 
all gather around the table and look at 
the drawings, with the shrubbery 
growing so permanently in the front 
yard, and the grass of that peculiar 
seductive shade of green always used 
by architects; and the women going 
up the front steps holding their para- 
sols in the military manner which no 
one but an architect can understand. 
And after they have admired the 
elevation the women retire into the 
background again and everything 
goes merrily forward among the men. 
There are contracts and sub-contracts 
and bondsmen and material and me- 
chanics' liens — and the new structure 
rises proudly in the air, while the 
building committee run hither and 
thither and rub their hands in glee. 

36 



About the time the building is en- Social 

i i ,1 • , j Mendicants 

closed something seems to dampen 
their ardor. Perhaps it is the plaster, 
or it may be the lack of plaster. I am 
not very certain as to the details, but 
after a while they call a congrega- 
tional meeting. The pastor announces 
it for Thursday night and he hopes 
for a large attendance, as matters of 
grave importance to the congregation 
and the cause of religion at large are 
to be considered. 

Of course everybody goes. The 
minister comes in rather late, looking 
pale and tired, and sits with his elbow 
on his knee and his head on his hand, 
two or three fingers gleaming amid 
his dark locks very effectively. The 
building committee whisper solemnly 
together in the corner, with heavy 
lines on their brows. And presently 
the chairman reads his report, which 
ends : "We are therefore fifteen thou- 
sand dollars in debt, and this amount 
must be raised before we can worship 
in this sacred structure with con- 
sciences void of offense." He sits 

37 



Social down with a slight cough of embar- 
rassment, and the women fall back in 
their seats with a concerted gasp. 

There is a solemn stillness, broken 
only by a deep sigh from the minister. 
Then a slender woman in the front 
row rises and says, with a tremor of 
decision in her voice, "My friends, this 
debt must be paid; this money must 
be raised." At her last word every 
feminine spine in the room stiffens, 
and every woman raises her chin and 
sniffs the battle from afar. 

The men glance slyly at each other 
from under their drawn brows, and 
with difficulty refrain from chuckling 
outright. The minister raises his 
head and beams with delight and ap- 
proval upon the sisters. The chair- 
man of the building committee springs 
to his feet and exclaims, "God bless 
the ladies — it will be done!" 

And it is done. Men, poor crea- 
tures, sometimes know how to earn 
money, but it takes a woman to raise 
money. If you had told those women 
they must earn fifteen thousand dol- 

38 



lars, with interest at six per cent, in Social 

_ , ■• Mendicants 

as many years, nervous prostration 
would have become epidemic in that 
congregation. If you had told any 
one of them that within a year she 
would be selling popcorn-crisp from a 
tissue-paper booth on Broadway for 
a living, she would have fallen in a 
swoon at your feet. If you had told 
her that before six months had passed 
she would be a decorator, standing all 
day on a stepladder with her head 
tipped back at an angle of forty-five 
degrees, she would have shrieked with 
dismay. If you had told her that ere 
long she would be conducting a lot- 
tery and evading the police, she would 
have laughed you to scorn. If you 
had told her that before Christmas she 
would be begging in the streets for 
herself and her children she would 
have committed suicide. 

And yet, to pay church debts, wo- 
men have done all these things and 
more. Children have been organized 
in bands and sent from house to house 
to sell tickets for something utterly 

39 



Social beyond their comprehension. Young 
en ican s p e0 pj e h ave been encouraged to assist 
in nameless devices for extorting 
money from an unwilling public. And 
in the face of this there are people who 
insist that the church is a conservator 
of morals, and who wonder why beg- 
gary is on the increase among us and 
pauperism rapidly becoming respect- 
able. 

It is one thing to beg for those who 
are or who think they are or whom 
we think are in want. But when re- 
ligion goes a-begging, and begging 
for luxuries — for steeples and velvet 
cushions and silver communion-ser- 
vices and axminster carpets and 
carved pulpit-chairs and stained-glass 
windows — then either beggary has 
become respectable or the church has 
lost its respectability. 

A plain statement of the needs of 
any cause that seems to us worthy, 
placed before the public or before in- 
dividuals who may not have heard of 
it, is entirely different from that per- 
sonal appeal and importunity which 

40 



takes the matter out of the realm of Social 
conscience and judgment and makes en lcan s 
the gift an unwilling compromise with 
our lower instead of our better selves. 
That is the charity of which Emerson 
wrote, "Though I confess with shame 
I sometimes succumb and give the 
dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by 
and by I shall have the manhood to 
withhold." 

Another class of beggars are those 
that beg for influence they could never 
acquire or for work they have not the 
skill to do. I was called from the writ- 
ing of this paper by a young woman 
who said she desired my assistance in 
getting work. She brought a card of 
introduction from a friend in another 
city who pronounced her reliable and 
of good family, saying that her father 
had met with reverses and it was ne- 
cessary for her to find employment. 
The young woman was twenty-two 
years of age. Her hat was almost as 
large as a hearse and similarly dec- 
orated : six tall plumes on the outside 
and floral decorations below. She said 

41 



Social she wanted employment, but I soon 
en ican s discovered fa^t w hat she really want- 
ed was a salary. She expressed some 
vague fear that she might be incon- 
venienced in obtaining a situation by 
the fact that she didn't know how to 
do anything at all, but altogether she 
was disposed to think this of small im- 
portance and cheerfully asserted her 
willingness to take any kind of place 
"except of course to do housework in 
a family" — she would not like to do 
that. When I hinted that this was the 
only kind of work for which there is a 
permanent demand she said yes, she 
supposed it was. After a little urging 
she confessed a willingness to be com- 
panion to a lady. I told her it was not 
often a woman desired a companion 
who knew absolutely nothing — that 
was a peculiarity of men. But per- 
haps some invalid — oh, she couldn't 
take care of an invalid; she never had 
any knack about sickness. And so 
forth. Any woman can reproduce the 
conversation from memory. The girl 
had absolutely nothing to offer but 

42 



what she called a willingness to work Social 

r . ., , , ., Mendicants 

— a state of mind that numerous phil- 
anthropists have decided is all that 
can be expected of more than half of 
our population and which has a right 
to have work provided for it. In other 
words the young woman was a beg- 
gar, save that she begged for an op- 
portunity to receive in exchange for 
her ignorance instead of honestly ask- 
ing alms. 

We have many varieties of such 
mendicants among us, whom I shall 
call, for purposes of classification, the 
Ignorers of the Demand. 

When an ordinary level-headed 
mortal decides upon an occupation he 
selects something that he thinks he 
can do and that he thinks people want 
done. This would seem a simple 
enough proposition to those untainted 
with genius or even talent. But the 
particular type of beggar last men- 
tioned, and for brevity I shall call him 
the Ignorer, directs his entire atten- 
tion to deciding what he would like 
to do. 

43 



Social Two of these called upon me a few 

Mendicants i rr-w •< 

days ago. Iney also were young 
women. One of them was an elocu- 
tionist. Now some people are born 
elocutionists, some become elocution- 
ists, but nearly everybody has elocu- 
tion thrust upon him. I never heard 
of any demand for an elocutionist; I 
never knew anyone to advertise for an 
elocutionist; I never saw an item in 
the first newspaper of a boom town 
read: "What we need in our rapidly 
growing city is a good, live, all-round 
reader and reciter." Nevertheless, 
this young woman had studied elocu- 
tion. She gesticulated in curves; her 
voice rose and fell in curves, and it 
was a very girlish voice, fresh and 
sweet. She desired me to act as pa- 
troness of a reading and recital to be 
given in a hotel parlor. Her friend 
was a musician. Now I never patron- 
ize elocution, and so I said, modestly 
I hope, that my name was of no im- 
portance but, having borne it more 
years than I cared to mention, I pre- 
ferred not to use it without knowl- 

44 



Mendicants 



edge, and as I had never had the pleas- Social 
ure of hearing her friend play, I could 
hardly advise other people to hear her. 
To be truthful, I began to say "hear- 
ing her read," but suddenly there 
darted through my mind the fear that 
she might then and there drop upon 
one knee and in frenzied tones adjure 
me that Curfew Must Not Ring To- 
night. As I have never wished to ring 
the curfew, nor at any time used my 
influence to have it rung, nor ever 
known anyone who desired to ring it, 
and think, indeed, the general feeling 
is decidedly with the negative, I have 
never been able to account for the 
agonized pleading of so many young 
women against it. Naturally one ob- 
jects to being nagged about a thing he 
has no intention of doing, and I have 
therefore become sensitive about the 
curfew and decidedly averse to the 
subject. 

So, although I do not shine as a 
musical critic, I felt safer in the hands 
of the musician, more specially as she 
was a violinist and was without her 

45 



Mendicants 



Social violin. But the young woman trium- 
phantly produced their list of patron- 
esses and assured me that "all the best 
and wealthiest ladies of Pasadena 
were interested," a statement in which 
they were undoubtedly borne out by 
their list. Indeed, I felt that a 
full attendance of patronesses would 
crowd the hotel parlors to suffocation 
and bar out an eager public; and, with 
such tact as I could command, I again 
declined to allow my name to be used. 
Whereupon the elocutionist arose and 
in her grandest manner informed me 
that "some people were obliged to 
earn their living by their talents" and 
she considered it very selfish for those 
who were not, to stand in their way. 

I wondered vaguely, after they 
were gone, if the poor things really 
thought they were earning their liv- 
ing — begging for patronage, for in- 
fluence, for help at every turn, supply- 
ing an unfelt want and taking the time 
of numbers of busy women to ask 
of them a favor — often unwillingly 
granted. By what perversion of the 

46 



mind did it ever come to be considered Social 

, 11.1 i 1 1 j Mendicants 

more honorable than household ser- 
vice? 

But the Ignorers are not all wo- 
men. A young man called at my 
house during the early summer. I 
knew him as the son of a minister: a 
man who had insisted upon studying 
theology against the advice of his 
friends, possessing no qualifications 
for his chosen profession and a conse- 
quent failure therein. The boy was 
thus of the second generation of Ig- 
norers. He wished to sell me a book. 
He said very little about the book, it 
is true, but urged that he was trying 
to earn a little money during vaca- 
tion to help him along with his edu- 
cation, and he thought I would be 
willing to assist him. After this plea 
he produced the volume. I examined 
it and told him it was a book I would 
not buy under any circumstances. He 
intimated that my name would be of 
use to him in the neighborhood, etc. 
The youth, the ignorance, the pathos 
of the boy ought to have protected 

47 



Social him from a lecture, but it did not. I 

Mendicants ^ him precisdy what j thoU g ht o£ 

the book: a hotch-potch of ill-ar- 
ranged matter, made to sell to ignor- 
ant people. I drew his attention to 
the fact that he had begun by reciting 
his own needs and endeavoring to en- 
list my sympathy. And just as I was 
warming to the subject and showing 
him exactly how he could earn an hon- 
est living and save himself the mor- 
tification of begging, he evidenced a 
desire to depart. Whether it was 
anxiety to adopt my counsel or to es- 
cape it I am unable to say, but as I saw 
him a few minutes later entering a 
neighbor's house I fear it was the 
latter. 

Then there are the artists, the men 
and women who decide to paint pic- 
tures because they like it better than 
anything else, and then berate the rest 
of us because we are not willing to 
pay them two hundred dollars for an 
afternoon's work! Now I have noth- 
ing whatever to say against two hun- 
dred or two thousand dollars for an 

48 



afternoon's work if talent has made Social 
the artist's time so valuable that he Mendicants 
can get it. If a man thinks his pic- 
tures worth five hundred dollars 
apiece he has the right to hold them 
at that price until somebody else 
thinks so. But he must not talk su- 
perciliously of the failure of western 
people to appreciate art. The fact is 
that very few people anywhere know 
much about the value of pictures. Nor 
does it argue a lack of taste. In liter- 
ature one may be finely appreciative 
without having the faintest idea con- 
cerning the market value of what he is 
reading; and it is much the same with 
pictures. 

When a Miss or Mrs. or Mr. in a 
studio is spoken of among your friends 
as "really very hard up" and you are 
adjured to go and buy something from 
her or him, and you go modestly with 
your last five-dollar gold-piece in your 
purse and stand politely looking 
about, with your hands clasped in 
such a way as to hide the worn places 
in your gloves, wondering if you can 

49 



Social get on this winter with your old jacket 
freshened up with new passementerie, 
feeling a trifle thankful that your 
gown is long in front and hides the 
shabbiness of your best shoes — does 
it ever strike you as very, well, re- 
markable that the little sketch, six by 
eight inches, of bare tree-trunks 
against a red sky, with two blue 
boulders and a little graduated green 
spread in a slightly malarial manner 
toward the lower left-hand corner, 
should be worth twenty-five dollars? 
I am willing to confess that I have in- 
dulged in these inartistic reflections 
on numerous occasions, and at times 
I have seen others who seemed to me 
to be struggling with questions of 
economics when they should have 
been giving their souls exclusively to 
art. 

It is impossible to remember all 
the mendicants who come to one's 
door masquerading in the garb of in- 
dustry. And even if it were possible 
time would fail me to tell of the solici- 
tors for subscribers to the Ladies' 

50 



Home Drivel who intend to study Social 
music on the proceeds; of the young en lcants 
newspaper reporters who beg you for 
items concerning the private lives of 
yourselves and others which you con- 
sider out of place in public print, be- 
cause, as they plead, "it is their bread 
and butter"; of the agents desiring a 
written order for the same brand of 
baking-powder you are using, that 
they may obtain a commission for "in- 
troducing" it; of the old man selling 
pointless needles with a wooden leg 
(I speak advisedly); and all the 
countless horde of people who deceive 
themselves or try to deceive them- 
selves, and us, into thinking that they 
are earning a living. Certainly it is 
better than tying up one's foot in a 
pillow and standing beside the City 
Hall steps begging people to buy col- 
lar-buttons; but I for one never feel 
virtuous after purchasing something 
I do not want and can ill afford, and 
thus keeping up a false demand. 

Did I say never? Let me make an 
exception of the old woman who sold 

51 



Social pencils from house to house, and when 
asked if it was not rather hard for one 
of her age to walk so much, and inter- 
rogated concerning her children, re- 
plied: "Yes, I have a daughter I could 
live with, but she has two children 
growing up and I'd rather sell pencils 
than take their sass ! " 

If the real industries were crowd- 
ed; if we were overrun with good 
house-servants and skilful men to do 
odd jobs; if hired men were like Jonas 
in the Rollo books ; if, in short, every- 
thing we really want done were well 
and abundantly done, one might ex- 
cuse himself for conniving at beggary 
and helping to keep it within the pale 
of respectability. But few of the 
things that the comfort of life depends 
most upon are really well done. And 
in view of this fact, it might be better 
for us to reduce the work of life as 
rapidly as possible to its legitimate 
place, and to this end not only call a 
spade a spade but oblige a large num- 
ber of those otherwise occupied at 
present to learn its use. 

52 



SOME IMMORTAL FALLACIES 

If any good results to a man from 
believing a lie, it certainly comes from 
the honesty of his belief. As soon as 
suspicion of untruth obtains a hold in 
his mind, the value of the lie departs. 
When a man says, "I had rather be- 
lieve so and so," he is reposing on an 
air-cushion with the stopper left out; 
sooner or later his comfort in it will 
vanish. In view of this it is question- 
able whether one is justified in attack- 
ing old and apparently harmless be- 
liefs. Most of us have acquired an 
accumulation of views which we have 
accepted either in good nature or in 
self-defense, just as a man accepts the 
theory that his wife makes good 
bread, because nothing would be 
gained by denying it. He means that 
the bread is good for him. 

However, it seems fitting that we 
should go over some of these time- 

53 



Some worn ideas and see if any of them are 
Fallacies threadbare enough to give to the poor. 
I say give to the poor because there is 
no danger of their being discarded by 
everybody. There are many new ways 
of looking at things, but there is no 
dearth of those who prefer to look at 
everything in the old way, and no one 
need be afraid to throw aside an opin- 
ion which he once found comfortable, 
but which now appears to him rather 
shabby and old-fashioned, for fear the 
world may lose the comfort it once 
gave him. There are far more people 
standing around waiting for conven- 
tional commonplaces than there are 
people discarding them. Unless you 
are made on a mental plan quite 
unique, your old clothes will fit some- 
body and perhaps furnish him a Sun- 
day suit. 

Nor is there any need of shivering 
at the thought of changing one's 
views. Now and then we hear people 
say, "Oh, I should be perfectly miser- 
able if I did not believe" this or that. 
But this is entirely illogical. If I 

54 



could take away your belief (which I Some 
cannot) before you had ceased to be- Fallacies 
lieve it, your apprehension might be 
well founded. Certain snakes, I have 
understood, shed their skins annually 
(or rather, I have been told; I never 
understood it). Now this is a very 
different matter from being - skinned 
alive. We can imagine the ripple of 
horror which must pass through the 
half-grown serpent when he learns 
from his elders that he will sometime 
lose his epidermis; when the time 
comes he is, no doubt, glad to be rid of 
it. But in shedding our cherished old 
theories we have consolations that are 
denied the beasts that perish. We 
know that they will be seized by the 
man behind us as the very latest thing 
out, and that he will extract from 
them all the warmth and comfort that 
they once gave us. 

One may therefore say of opinions, 
that they are not lost but gone behind. 
No one need be afraid, then, as he 
mounts to the heaven of truth on the 
wings of progress, to drop his mantle 

55 



Some as he rises. There will always be 
Fallacies some Elisha standing about, ready 
to assume it and become famous 
thereby. 

I am prompted to these consola- 
tory remarks by the fear that before 
I have finished I may attack some be- 
lief dear to the heart of some reader, 
and I wish it distinctly understood 
that I do not intend to destroy those 
beliefs. Most of them, indeed, are 
practically indestructible. Some of 
them have become imbedded in our 
language and their extirpation would 
call for radical changes in our vocabu- 
lary. 

Take for instance "old-maidish," a 
word founded on the universal belief 
that persons who, in the providence 
of God and the improvidence of man, 
have reached a certain or an uncertain 
age without finding anyone whom 
they enjoy differing with, to the ex- 
clusion of all others, are prim, precise, 
proper, and mentally and morally rec- 
tilinear. Now in examining the basis 
of this belief we are forced to acknowl- 

56 



edge that the facts are against it. Some 
Nearly all, if not quite all, of the "old- Fallacies 
maidish" people of our acquaintance 
are married, while the maiden ladies 
and the bachelors, take them all in all, 
are an easy-going, readily adaptable, 
fit-in-any-place sort of people, who 
might perhaps have become set in 
their ways if they had ever been per- 
mitted to have any, but who have been 
so hustled about by their married kin 
that they have sometimes been forced 
into matrimony in the hope of having 
their own way at last: a hope which 
too often fails of realization by reason 
of a similar motive on the part of the 
other high contracting party. 

If you will call to mind the two or 
three most exact, fastidious and par- 
ticular men and women you have ever 
known, you will find they were all 
married. This is of course a rude 
shock to the ancient and honorable 
theory, but the seeker after abstract 
truth must be prepared for shocks and 
throw all his preconceptions to the 
winds. 

57 



Some Less than a century ago a girl of 
Fallacies sixteen was commonly considered and 
referred to as a woman, and all the 
childishness and crudity that such im- 
maturity involved was assumed to be 
characteristic of her sex. These char- 
acteristics attached themselves not 
only to the masculine but also the fem- 
inine idea of woman. They have be- 
come a part of common speech, inso- 
much that "effeminate" has become 
a term of reproach, and women have 
staggered along under the belief that 
all the things the world has said of 
them are the result of careful obser- 
vation and must be true. They, or 
many of them, believe that they are 
malicious, envious and spiteful be- 
cause they have heard from infancy of 
feminine spite, feminine jealousy and 
the like. When a man is malicious it 
is plain malice, without sex. No one 
ever heard of petty masculine spite. 
We respect the individuality even of a 
mean man, and allow that he is mean 
because he chooses to be. But a wo- 
man is coerced by her sex; her sins 

58 



are all feminine, and are saddled upon Some 
the rest of us until, really, the bur- Fallacies 
den is becoming greater than we can 
bear. 

What would become of the self- 
respect of the ordinary man if, in addi- 
tion to his own shortcomings, he were 
nagged by having all the sins of the 
decalogue ascribed to him by virtue of 
his masculinity? How would it strike 
a modest man to hear Mr. Bombast 
accused of "masculine vanity," or an 
honest man to hear of Mr. Steele ar- 
rested for "masculine dishonesty," or 
a tender-hearted man to read of a 
lynching as a display of "masculine 
cruelty"? Would they not one and 
all weep and howl for the miseries 
thus heaped upon them? And is it 
not possible that after two or three 
hundred years of hearing these things, 
they might reason somewhat in this 
fashion: "Vanity, forging and lynch- 
ing are characteristic of man; I am a 
man; therefore I am vain, dishonest 
and bloodthirsty"? This will, I think, 
account quite logically for the views 

59 



Some that women often express concerning 
Facades capitalized Woman. 

Take the matter of jealousy as to 
personal attractions, and unwilling- 
ness to acknowledge beauty in other 
women, which is one of the most gen- 
erally accepted feminine weaknesses. 
Now all women know that women are 
peculiarly susceptible to beauty in 
other women, that they talk about it 
with unbounded enthusiasm, and take 
unlimited satisfaction in the contem- 
plation of a charming face. Indeed 
any beautiful woman will tell you, and 
even moderately plain women will tell 
you, that their personal attractions 
have always been more ardently ap- 
preciated by women than by men. A 
beautiful girl, possessed of the ordin- 
ary graces of mind, has the same ad- 
vantage in making her way among 
strangers of her own sex that she has 
among men. 

And this brings us face to face 
with another fallacy unquestioningly 
accepted by most of us, namely, that 
personal beauty is an extremely po- 

60 



tent factor in a woman's success. That Some 
it is an important factor in her life Fallacies 
can hardly be questioned, but whether 
its influence is toward her success is a 
question which the observation of 
each of us, honestly given, will, I 
think, tend to answer in the negative. 
Of course the dangers of failure and 
unhappiness attending the possession 
of great beauty are like the cares and 
troubles of great wealth — most of us 
would risk being crushed by them. 
And in spite of the fate of the beauties 
we have known it is highly probable 
that parents will go on hoping that 
their sons may grow rich and their 
daughters beautiful, to the end of the 
chapter. 

There is something peculiarly in- 
teresting to the childless observer in 
this matter of plans and hopes which 
parents entertain for their offspring. 
During a long and useless life I have 
been the recipient of many confi- 
dences as to the well-defined talents 
and pronounced tastes of various 
Dickies and Dorothies, and have never 

61 



Some I trust been found wanting in a spirit 

Immortal r • ,-, , ■, 

Fallacies °* acquiescence in the paternal cer- 
tainty that these early indications 
pointed to a brilliant career in the line 
thus suggested. True, I have of late 
years entertained myself at times by 
recalling some of these promises of 
early youth and comparing them with 
the actual occupations of their possess- 
ors. The result has shaken me a lit- 
tle in the matter of ready sympathy 
with the parent of today, who assures 
me that his boy's tastes are all scien- 
tific because he meddles with the bat- 
tery in the cellar; but I have not ob- 
served as yet any diminution of en- 
thusiasm on the part of mothers and 
fathers by reason of my dampened 
ardor. I remember two boys, given to 
pillage and devastation, whose happi- 
ness seemed to hinge upon the posses- 
sion of matches, and who at various 
times placed their respective families 
in imminent danger of destruction by 
fire — a tendency that pointed plainly 
to a brilliant military career of arson, 
plunder and death. One of them is an 

62 



insurance agrent and the other a Pres- Some 



i t> 



Immortal 

bytenan preacher, opposed to the re- Fallacies 
vision of the creed. 

I also knew several little girls 
whose talent for music was so absorb- 
ing that their parents doubted the ad- 
visability of teaching them the multi- 
plication table, lest it should delay the 
time when they would dazzle a wait- 
ing public by their artistic skill. I 
met one of them the other day, and, 
being an old-fashioned person, asked 
her if she still "played." She looked 
at me blankly for a moment and said, 
"No, I work. The mother of four 
children does not play." Another said 
she was glad she studied music be- 
cause it made her hands flexible for 
the typewriter; and a third is teach- 
ing plane trigonometry in a high 
school. I have known a great many 
boys whose interest in machinery was 
so much greater than their interest in 
books that they would forget to go to 
school if there was a fire-engine with- 
in three blocks of the school-house — 
the same boys that manifested their 

63 



Some fine instinct for mechanics earlier in 
Fallacies n ^ e by disemboweling all their me- 
chanical toys to see how they were 
made, and then howled dismally be- 
cause they would not go. 

So far as I have been able to fol- 
low the lives of these gifted youths, I 
have found them walking in paths 
professional or in the byways of dry- 
goods and general merchandise. Only 
two of them, so far as I know, have 
devoted their time to machinery; one 
of these writes poetry for the daily 
papers and the other was a successful 
candidate for a city office at the last 
election. Truly "a boy's will is the 
wind's will, and the thoughts of youth 
are long, long thoughts." I wonder 
how many of us, looking back to /the 
tastes of childhood, can trace in them 
any indication of the preferences of 
maturity. Personally, nothing stands 
out in my own recollection more viv- 
idly than my eagerness for stories of 
the sea. I hung over them with dot- 
ing fondness, which varied in direct 
proportion to the thrillingness of 

64 



the shipwreck. This particular form Some 

- - . , . i , * Immortal 

of disaster and hair-breadth escape Fallacies 
seemed to curdle my blood to exactly 
the proper consistency for acute hap- 
piness. I have never been able to tell 
why I preferred it to fire, earthquake 
or Indians, nor have I ever understood 
why I cared about such tales at all. 
No doubt my parents spent anxious 
hours in the fear that I might run 
away to sea, but as time went on and 
I displayed a comfortable preference 
for my own hearthstone, their anxiety 
was somewhat allayed. I have won- 
dered at times however what might 
have been the difference in the result 
of the late war with Spain if this pro- 
nounced taste on my part had con- 
strained them to educate me for the 
navy. 

And this leads me to the time- 
worn theory that a woman cannot 
throw straight. Nothing prevents me 
from attacking this ancient preju- 
dice but the certainty that all my ef- 
forts would fall wide of the mark. I 
had also intended to make a point con- 

65 



Some cerning woman's ability to sharpen a 
fSSSS pencil, but I desist. 

There is no fallacy more insidious 
than the idea that we can make people 
like us by doing good. There is some- 
thing very pathetic in the strenuous 
efforts of worthy souls to get them- 
selves loved by reason of virtuous and 
commendable acts. Now yeast is very 
active, but I never knew anyone to be 
really fond of yeast. Of course we all 
respect it and acknowledge its useful- 
ness, but very few of us could live up 
to a diet of yeast. Amiel says (and 
for wisdom how often we go to the 
man who seemed to do nothing!) : "In 
choosing one's friends we must choose 
those whose qualities are inborn and 
whose virtues are virtues of tempera- 
ment." Very discouraging to those of 
us who have been striving to piece out 
nature by grace. But some crumb of 
comfort may be found in the possi- 
bility that if we continue to do good 
and eschew evil all the days of our life, 
acquired virtue may come to sit so 
lightly and easily upon us that an oc- 

66 



casional fellow-sinner may think it Some 

di • ■ , e Immortal 

lOVe US in Spite OI Fallacies 

the real curmudgeon beneath. At any 
rate the experiment is worth trying. 
And yet I fear that the melancholy 
truth will remain, that the individual 
who only wishes good to the whole 
world in a hearty, whole-souled way, 
without lifting a finger to bring it 
about, will always have more friends 
than the one who determinedly and 
systematically sets himself to get up 
a millennium according to his own 
plans and specifications. 

This brings us quite logically to an 
unfounded opinion current among 
men since the beginning of time, 
namely that women, even good wo- 
men, like wicked men. This idea 
seems to have originated with Adam, 
when he found that his wife, believ- 
ing Satan to be a man of the world, 
thought it possible that he might be 
able to make a few suggestions to her 
and her horticultural husband. Now 
I have observed that a good many 
men like wicked men; at least they 

67 



Some stand by them and protect them, and 
Fallacies carefully hide their wrongdoing from 
women, in a way that argues the 
greatest friendliness and affection. 
All the men that I know are good, so 
of course I can't speak very positively 
on this subject; but I am quite cer- 
tain that if other women seem to like 
bad men it is because they think they 
are good; and so long as they depend 
upon men, as they must, for their in- 
formation I am disposed to think they 
will find considerable difficulty in sep- 
arating the wheat from the chaff. 

Very few good people, men or wo- 
men, really like evil, but it is true that 
many of the qualities that make us 
likable, developed to excess make us 
immoral. It is doubtless these quali- 
ties that attract: the social grace, the 
ready speech, the considerateness, the 
cordiality that make a young man too 
popular for his own good and a ready 
prey to flattery. People do not like 
him because of his faults, but some of 
his faults may result from too many 
people liking him. Given all these 

68 



good qualities, however, and the Some 
strength to resist the dangers they en- Faiiades 
tail, you have the man most women 
find socially agreeable. I do not think 
he differs greatly from the man men 
find socially agreeable. And right here 
I should like to ask why we are so con- 
stantly assured that women like 
"strong" men, "men they can lean up- 
on," men of force and character, and 
why, in the face of this, the ideal 
"ladies' man" is represented as a men- 
tal weakling. 

Another fallacious position, which 
it especially becomes most of us to 
undermine, is the popular idea that 
young people are seeing their happiest 
days. I remember once being greatly 
surprised to hear a venerable man say 
that he felt sorry for young people; 
they seemed to him so crude and fla- 
vorless, like very green apples. I am 
unable to say just how the idea of 
youthful happiness has gained such 
ground, for, really, youth is full of tur- 
moil and mental uncertainty and bit- 
ter disappointment and yearning and 

69 



Some helplessness. Physical vigor is un- 

Immortal ,■ ■, ■> j ,1 • i , 

Fallacies questionably a good thing, but no one 
really wants his youth again. If it 
should come to him unexpectedly he 
would call it softening of the brain 
and be frightened beyond words. 
Middle life is in reality the serene 
and comfortable time, when one has 
reached the top and sits fanning him- 
self, mentally looking over the land- 
scape of life before starting down hill. 
It is the climax, the moment we have 
been striving for, the arrival. The real 
question is, when is it? Even old age 
is better than youth. It is a great 
deal easier to go down hill than up. 
I am particularly anxious to have this 
theory firmly established in the minds 
of the young and I trust that its in- 
culcation will be made compulsory in 
the public schools. I have noticed 
that, up to a certain age, children are 
very eager to be grown, and I think if 
this respect for maturity could be 
deepened into envy, and if the ordin- 
ary high-school commencement ad- 
dress could assume a tone of pity, tem- 

70 



pered with hope that the pupils might Some 
live through their present lamentable Fallacies 
condition and emerge into the happi- 
ness and dignity of middle-life, a 
much-needed reform might be brought 
about in the attitude of youth toward 
old age. Indeed I am not at all cer- 
tain that we are ourselves not to 
blame for the much-complained-of in- 
solence of youth, with our perpetual 
disrespect to our own estate and end- 
less laudation of theirs. If we all 
want to be young, or say we do, natur- 
ally the young take it that we are in 
a bad way, and those who call for too 
much sympathy are likely to get with 
it a good deal of contempt. 

Another serious misconception, 
and one that strikes deeper than may 
at first appear, is the belief that men 
do not care for beautiful clothes. This 
has always seemed to me a reflection 
on the artistic taste of half the race, 
which is as unkind as it is uncalled 
for. Men would undoubtedly like to 
dress in rich fabrics and bright colors, 
notably red, if their occupations 

71 



Some would permit. Indeed, in their days 

Immortal r i • ,1 1 j • j.* j 

Fallacies °* leisure they reveled in satins and 
velvets of varied hues, and nothing 
but the unrelenting demands of daily 
toil induced them to forego the deli- 
cate ruffles at the wrist and neck, the 
jeweled buckles and powdered hair of 
the court. Even within my memory 
men whose profession allowed them 
the dignity of a study at home — min- 
isters, professors and the like — at- 
tired themselves in dressing-gowns of 
gorgeous tints and graceful outline; 
but even these, alas, are numbered 
with the past. The flowered waist- 
coat is also gone. Nothing is left of 
their former glory but the cravat. 
There is something to me quite pa- 
thetic about a man's necktie: the ef- 
fort to crowd his whole artistic nature 
into a bit of silk two inches wide, se- 
lected in two minutes from two thou- 
sand others, is certainly touching. 
There is a mute appeal about it, as if 
it would say, "I am all he has left, the 
one useless article of his attire; but he 
clings to me to prove that he would 

72 



like to look pretty if he were not too Some 
busy." It is like the pot of stunted FalTades 
geranium in the window of the poor 
(sometimes it is very much like it) 
expressing the "heart hunger for art 
and beauty stifled by sordid care." I 
know of course that this cannot be 
helped, that men are crowded and 
jostled and hurried because of the de- 
mands of their families. I have always 
noticed that if a man's family is taken 
away from him he goes out of busi- 
ness, especially if he is making money 
fast and getting ahead of his competi- 
tors. But in spite of these facts I shall 
continue to shed tears over the necktie 
and all that it symbolizes. 

A most elusive and therefore most 
dangerous fallacy is one peculiarly 
dear to the feminine heart, namely the 
belief which every woman cherishes 
that she has the true spirit of social 
reform because she stands ready to do 
all sorts of sensible things — as soon 
as all the other women of her ac- 
quaintance are ready to support her in 
so doing. In other words, she is ready, 

73 



Some indeed eager, to be unfashionable as 
Fallacies soon as it shall become fashionable to 
be unfashionable. She wishes women 
would dress sensibly and entertain 
simply and rid their lives of various 
soul-destroying complexities, and she 
makes no secret of her wish. Indeed, 
she tells you of it most charmingly, 
while she holds her purse in one hand 
and catches up her superfluous dra- 
pery with the other. She thinks the 
custom of leaving a pack of visiting- 
cards at one residence is unnecessary 
and foolish, but she continues to leave 
them just the same, for fear that some 
one may fancy that she does not know 
all the useless conventionalities of so- 
ciety. Perhaps it might be well for 
her to have a card engraved, "I am 
perfectly acquainted with the card 
system and disapprove of the same. 
Mrs. Piatt R. E. Form." 

There is a fallacy for which we all 
feel such tenderness that I find it hard 
to lay rude hands upon it. It has been 
the theme of romance since romance 
was born, and the older we grow the 

74 



dearer it becomes. Is it necessary to Some 
say that I refer to the one-and-only- Fallacies 
love theory? But the fear that our 
novelists may desert it through my in- 
fluence, and start upon a series of 
emotional complexities involving in 
the reader a knowledge of differential 
calculus, prompts me to withdraw 
from any attack which I might other- 
wise have meditated. 

There is no greater fallacy current 
than that supply is governed by de- 
mand. Witness the enormous demand 
for the kind of bread your mother 
used to make, in contrast with the 
very small supply; witness the de- 
mand for good husbands, for obedient 
wives; and have you ever noticed in 
your own case that the demand for 
ready money in any way influenced 
the supply? If there were any relation, 
from my own experience I should say 
they vary inversely. 

Then there is that battered but 
still recognizable assertion that the 
senseless extravagances of the rich 
benefit the poor: the belief that the 

75 



Some laboring-man who makes sky-rockets 
Fallacies at one dollar a day is as much bene- 
fited as if he were making model tene- 
ments at the same wages, although 
the fireworks send gunpowder up and 
the new dwellings bring rents down. 
This much-dandled theory occupies 
about the same position in economics 
that a rubber doll occupies in the 
nursery: battered but still smiling, it 
serves to amuse the latest comer. 

Space is not sufficient for more 
than a mere reference to the well- 
known newspaper ideal of the mother- 
in-law. I have noticed that even edi- 
tors are not slow to send for "my 
wife's mother" when illness or trouble 
of any kind assails the household. 
And I have also made careful note of 
the fact that when any unhappiness 
has been caused in a family of my ac- 
quaintance by the much-maligned 
mother-in-law, it has invariably been 
by the husband's mother; and yet one 
never hears women speak with any- 
thing but consideration and respect of 
mothers-in-law. As a matter of fact 

76 



the modern mother-in-law, on both Some 
sides of the house, is in general a most fallacies 
philosophical and useful personage, 
and her abolition would cause a great 
gap in many more important places 
than the funny column of the news- 
paper. 

Another fiction dear to the repor- 
torial heart and pencil is the woman 
who screams and faints upon the oc- 
currence of any accident. I have been 
in several rather thrilling public catas- 
trophes and have never yet heard a 
woman scream or seen one faint from 
nervous excitement. True, I did once 
see a man, when a fallen building had 
buried three men beneath the debris, 
wildly pulling laths from two uprights 
on the remote edge of the pile and 
throwing them aimlessly about; but 
he was not reported. And I did read, 
in the report of the recent accident on 
the Coast Line, of a man, who was un- 
hurt, running through the car yell- 
ing, treading upon women who were 
pinned in the aisle, and being pre- 
vented from stepping upon an injured 

77 



Some woman with a baby in her arms by 
Fallacies being knocked down by another pas- 
senger. These things do not of course 
prove that women do not lose their 
heads in emergencies, but they do 
encourage us to believe that the public 
mind is prone to cling to certain pre- 
conceptions that may belong to the 
remote past. 

Perhaps there is a grain of truth 
in all of these notions, since we who 
have so often crushed them to earth 
see them so blithely rise again. And 
perhaps, since the principles that gov- 
ern our lives are, after all, so few and 
so easily acquired, the moral force of 
the race is to be expended hereafter 
in determining with nicety and exact- 
ness how to apply them to the com- 
plexities of modern life. For how- 
ever we may agree as to the truth or 
fallacy of all these things, we are all, 
I think, ready to affirm the unassail- 
ableness of Mr. Tulliver's statement 
that this is "an uncommon puzzlin' 
world." 



78 



A NEW POINT OF VIEW 

As we approach the end of a year 
it is seemly for those of us who are 
mentally supple to put ourselves 
through such exercises as shall enable 
us to keep up with or at least not lag 
too far behind the twentieth-century 
procession. In so doing, those of us 
who are young enough to dare it must 
of necessity look backward, and all of 
us who still "retain our faculties" 
must endeavor to look forward, that 
we may be prepared for the worst — 
it being self-evident that we are all 
prepared for the best, both in this life 
and that which is to come. 

In taking this survey it is unques- 
tionably the duty of everyone who dis- 
cerns a cloud, even no larger than a 
woman's hand, upon the horizon of 
our social future, to provide himself 
with the largest and most musical fog- 
horn procurable and sound a note of 

79 



A New warning. In pursuance of this solemn 
01 View duty I wish to draw your attention to 
facts and figures that point unmistak- 
ably to a no less serious culmination 
than the extinction of the human race. 
It is hard for us, sitting here in the 
midst of man's ingenious handiwork, 
surrounded by the evidence of his skill 
and intelligence, to imagine just how 
the world would feel if the human race 
should become extinct; but even the 
most unimaginative among us can 
readily understand that it would be 
lonesome. The animals would drop a 
tear to the memory of the Humane 
Society, and millions upon millions of 
dollars' worth of machinery would 
rust in idleness since the veriest brute 
would find it impossible to make use 
of many of the things that man has de- 
vised. 

Far be it from me to add an un- 
necessary care at this festive season 
to minds already burdened with the 
Philippines. Nothing but a strong 
sense of duty and an abiding sym- 
pathy with the weaker sex morally, 

80 



prompts me to bring this matter be- A New 
fore you, with the following brief in- view ° 
troduction. 



Countless ages ago, long before 
any of us were born, there is every rea- 
son to believe that men lived in idle- 
ness. In such climates as permitted 
this they multiplied, and as they ven- 
tured, or were crowded, into condi- 
tions that required work to keep alive, 
they died. Thus only the idle sur- 
vived. This is called survival of the 
fittest. 

In this primitive state men had 
nothing whatever to do but make 
themselves agreeable, which is their 
natural bent. By a wise provision of 
nature they were handsomer than 
women. They never shaved their 
heads, and their hair hung in tendrils 
above their manly brows and curled 
about their shell-like ears and fell 
in ringlets upon their symmetrical 
shoulders. They were natural musi- 
cians, and oh how divinely they sang! 
They were graceful, elegant — in short 

81 



A New they were "just perfectly lovely." An- 
01 view alogues of this happy state are to be 
seen among the birds and other ani- 
mals that never work, except when en- 
slaved by man, and where the male is 
much more brilliant and musical than 
his mate. 

Women in those days were rather 
plain, uninteresting creatures, but 
men loved them, — probably because 
men must love somebody and won't 
love each other. And these idle, su- 
percilious women used to sit about un- 
der the trees and listen to the musical 
contests of their suitors, make re- 
marks about their personal appear- 
ance, smile at their innocent schemes 
for attracting attention, and behave 
very much as — well — as was natural 
under the circumstances. 

Of course this idyllic condition of 
things could not continue. And, as 
usual, ambition proved the downfall of 
man. Gradually those beautiful and 
godlike creatures began to vie with 
each other for feminine favor in new 
and devious ways. Their siren voices 

82 



whispered in the primitive feminine A New 
ear, "Idol of my soul, don't trouble view° 
yourself to climb the bread-fruit tree 
for your luncheon; let me bring it to 
you." Then after a little while, "Star 
of my destiny, why not let me build a 
shelter over you, lest the bread-fruit 
fall upon you and mar your" — (and 
here mendacity came to the aid of am- 
bition, and flattery was born) — "your 
faultless and angelic features." Still 
later, recognizing the need of his un- 
attractive companion for adornment, 
he brought gifts of flowers and bright 
feathers and bits of colored stone and 
shining metal, which enabled her to 
trick herself out quite stylishly. 

And thus, gradually, men, alas, be- 
gan to work and evil days came upon 
the race. 

Now, moderation is not a mascu- 
line quality. They tore through the 
forests in pursuit of game; they 
waded into rivers for fish; they 
dragged about trees to build houses; 
they came home all sloppy and tired ; 
and the harder they worked the less 

83 



A New beautiful they became; they shaved 
m view °ff their hyacinthine locks, and some 
of them wore overalls. And they be- 
gan to fuss about fastening their 
clothing with orange-thorns, till one 
of them invented buttons and life be- 
came quite sordid and prosaic for the 
poor fellows. 

Of course the women enjoyed it. 
They sat about and giggled over the 
mad race for precedence, and ordered 
their slaves about, demanded more 
flowers and stuffed poultry for their 
hats, more rooms in their houses, 
larger and more brilliant stones to 
wear, daintier things to eat, and be- 
haved altogether quite shamefully. 

But finally their day of reckoning 
came. Men became interested in the 
competition itself, and forgot all about 
its object. 

They began to think quite highly 
of themselves and the more successful 
among them even went the length of 
considering themselves "catches," pre- 
suming to pick and choose, and to dis- 
cuss the advisability or non-advisabil- 

84 



ity of encumbering themselves with A New 

, , j ,■ • T Point of 

extravagant and exacting wives. In V iew 
other words, they began to get even 
with the women for their former su- 
percilious and contemptuous treat- 
ment. 

Then the women awoke to the fact 
that they were helpless. They did not 
know how to do anything but manage 
men, and heretofore that had been a 
comparatively easy task; as it grew 
harder they of necessity gave more 
time to it, but they never regained 
their former supremacy. Privately 
they all knew that the luckless primi- 
tive ancestress who was too lazy to 
gather her own bread-fruit was at the 
bottom of all the trouble. She had 
given away her sex and there was 
nothing left for them but to make the 
best of it. So they set about finding 
out what would please men, and men 
very affably aided them by setting 
forth their preferences. 

It was into this epoch that most 
of us, I think, were born. And there 
is every indication that if the world 

85 



A New is to continue we shall have to be born 

Point of 

View again. 

Men have contracted a bad habit of 
industry; they have piled up more 
wealth than they have time to spend, 
and in consequence they have founded 
colleges for women, many of whom 
had grown somewhat weary of sitting 
around watching men work and were 
quite willing to go to school. 

These institutions very injudi- 
ciously taught women all the arts and 
sciences and all the discoveries men 
had made, and all their ways of mak- 
ing money, with the sole intention of 
course of impressing upon them the 
ability of those who had done all this 
to take care of women for all time to 
come, and of demonstrating to them 
the lack of any necessity on their part 
for inventing or doing anything or 
knowing anything at all about any- 
thing, except how to make them- 
selves agreeable to men in general and 
to one man in particular — if he should 
happen to come along. 

The professors in these institu- 

86 



tions always took pains to impress A New 
upon the women who attended them v?ew° 
that there was no harm in knowing 
things, provided they kept quiet about 
it and pretended not to know any- 
thing, and that they must never under 
any circumstances, unless forced by 
starvation, make any practical use of 
anything they learned, or employ it in 
earning money. 

Well, women went on in this way 
for quite a while, but again the vault- 
ing ambition of man over-leapt itself, 
and this effort to show what he had 
done and could do brought him to 
grief. Women came to know so much 
by and by that they undertook to do 
things, and before men really awoke 
to the dangers of their situation, 
women had sallied forth and gone to 
work. 

Then the awful horror of their 
condition dawned upon the dominant 
sex. The woman who could take care 
of herself would have to be concili- 
ated. And men were hoist with their 
own petard. 

87 



A New I have endeavored thus briefly to 
OU View outline a situation that presents 
strange questions for our considera- 
tion and calls for a vital readjustment 
of at least half our views. Large 
numbers of men have not fully awak- 
ened to the real condition of affairs, 
and no doubt those who are comfort- 
ably settled in life under the old re- 
gime may never quite realize its vex- 
ations; but most of us have more or 
less to do with the training of the 
young and the matter should there- 
fore claim our serious attention. 

It is not likely that in our day mat- 
ters will reach such a crisis that men 
will depend entirely upon women for 
support and thus be obliged to marry 
for homes; consequently it is not 
likely that many of us will have to see 
the total disappearance of any desire 
on the part of women to make them- 
selves agreeable to men. But indica- 
tions are not lacking that the free-and- 
easy masculine attitude toward matri- 
mony will soon become a thing of the 
past. 

88 



Of course there will always be a A New 
large number of useful and ornamen- view ° 
tal men and women who do not want 
to be married. Concerning these I 
have nothing to say. It may not seem 
to all of us the happiest frame of mind 
never to want to be married, but it is 
certainly more comfortable than want- 
ing to be unmarried, and it is discreet 
not to stir up these good people on the 
subject, lest they become epigram- 
matical and say disagreeable personal 
things as to the relative number of 
wrinkles and gray hairs of those in- 
side and outside the matrimonial pale. 
Even these worthy citizens, whom we 
are all rather anxious to conciliate and 
keep in good humor, would lament 
with us the total disappearance of an 
institution which they are always glad 
to have other people maintain. 

Primarily, as I have attempted to 
show, men rather enjoyed making 
themselves agreeable, and this fact 
gives us reason to hope that with a 
little judicious assistance they may re- 
acquire some of their former skill in 

89 



A New this regard. The problem lies in the 
View awful chasm between the primitive 
and the modern woman. Still, there is 
reason to believe that, if woman, with 
her once limited intelligence, learned 
by stress of circumstances to know ex- 
actly what she ought to do to please 
man, he, by close attention and un- 
limited advice, can learn how to please 
her. 

Personally, I am inclined to think 
the matter not entirely hopeless, and 
when one reflects on the able assist- 
ance always extended by man to wo- 
man in her efforts to learn what is 
satisfactory to him, it seems a ques- 
tion of simple justice and reciprocity 
for us to extend a helping hand to him 
in this hour of need. 

During the epoch that is just clos- 
ing there have been by careful esti- 
mate three hundred and fifty-nine 
thousand, eight hundred and seventy- 
three books written concerning the 
nature, tastes, duties and obligations 
of woman. In this way we have come 
to know more about ourselves than we 

90 



could have found out by simply being A New 
women. Of course most of these v?ew° 
books were written by men, and they 
have not always agreed on all points, 
but as to the basic principle there has 
been a singular and beautiful unanim- 
ity, namely, that if women are good 
they will certainly get married. If at 
any time there has been a hairbreadth 
diversion from this leading idea, it has 
varied no farther than to admit that 
while some women may be very good 
and yet not be married, it is an indis- 
putable truth that if a woman is not 
good she will certainly not get mar- 
ried. 

Concerning the nature of women, 
these three hundred and fifty-nine 
thousand, eight hundred and seventy- 
three volumes have shown more varia- 
tion, but on one point they have never 
failed to agree, namely, that woman is 
naturally the most unnatural person 
in the world, and if left to herself and 
not perpetually counseled by men, 
who are naturally natural, she will 
surely do things or want to do things 

91 



A New totally at variance with all her natural 

° X View instincts and inclinations. 

Of course this has made life rather 
puzzling for women at times, and yet 
it has had its advantages. If a woman 
ever wanted to do anything that she 
had not been in the habit of doing, she 
could immediately consult a book and 
see whether it was womanly; and if it 
ever occurred to her that since she 
wanted to do it, and it was innocent in 
itself, her doing it might possibly go 
to prove that it was womanly, she 
could read two or three books and find 
out that womanly women were wo- 
men whom men liked, and that any- 
thing men liked was womanly. This 
of course cleared up all her difficulties 
and made it very simple for her to de- 
cide what to do. 

In addition to all these books, 
there have been approximately eighty- 
nine million, nine hundred and forty- 
three thousand, two hundred and 
seventy-nine columns of newspaper 
stuff called "Woman and Home," 
which men have prepared telling wo- 

92 



men how to be womanly, and how to A New 
dress, cook, sew, think and walk, in V iew ° 
the way men like, and always promis- 
ing marriage if the directions are care- 
fully followed. (It is proper in this 
connection to state that the above fig- 
ures do not include Mr. Bok. Up to 
the time of Mr. Bok's appearance sta- 
tistics were carefully kept, but since 
his advent the statisticians have en- 
tirely lost count. There is reason to 
believe, however, that the output of 
advice to women has more than 
doubled.) 

When one calls to mind the fact 
that no books have yet been written 
on "Man and Paternity" or "The True 
Sphere of Man," and that no news- 
paper in existence contains a column 
devoted to "Man in the Home" or "Of 
Interest to Men"; that women have 
not published any "Heart-to-Heart 
Talks with Bachelors" and that very 
little has been said in print as to 
"The Kind of Men Women Like," 
it is not to be wondered at that 
men grope about rather blindly when 

93 



A New they endeavor to make themselves 

Point of i 

View charming. 

But books and papers are not the 
only aids that have been extended to 
women in these important matters. 
Men have delivered many lectures and 
sermons concerning "The Ideal Wo- 
man," in which they have carefully 
noted all their preferences and tastes 
so that any woman who was in danger 
of being simply a human creature, fol- 
lowing her instincts and allowing re- 
sults to justify her, has been saved 
from such disaster and enabled to lop 
off any inclinations that would inter- 
fere with matrimony. 

It is easy to see, therefore, why 
women are today such spontaneous 
and natural creatures; and there is 
reason to hope that by reducing the 
plan of life for men to a few simple 
axioms they may be relieved from 
many perplexities. 

Of course under the new dispen- 
sation all this printed matter will not 
necessarily be wasted. A great deal of 
it may be used again by changing the 

94 



pronouns. For instance, some news- A New 
paper might, with slight changes, view ° 
print an article on "How a Man May 
Keep the Affection of His Wife," 
something after this fashion: 

A man should always meet his wife with 
a pleasant smile on his return from his day's 
work. Remember that she has many cares 
and do not worry her with any of yours. 
Don't tell her you have a headache : no 
woman likes a complaining husband ; noth- 
ing is more likely to drive a woman to her 
club than perpetual complaints. 

Or something like this on the sub- 
ject of dress: 

Women care very little about the ex- 
pense of a man's clothing; all they ask is 
that he be simply and neatly dressed. The 
husband who comes to dinner in a fresh seer- 
sucker suit or a pair of clean blue overalls, 
with his wife's favorite flower in his button- 
hole, will be more beautiful in her eyes than 
if he were clad in the most faultless broad- 
cloth and polished linen. 

Or on the inexhaustible subject of 
marriage : 

Young women often accept many atten- 
tions from and appear to enjoy the society 
of young men they would not think of 
marrying. Young men should remember 

95 



A New this. A girl may be much amused by the wit 
Point of and gayety of a dashing cavalier, but it by 
View no means follows that she would select him 
as a husband. When it comes to marrying, 
women want something more than gallan- 
try. It would be well for some of our reck- 
less young society beaux to stop and inquire 
whether they are the kind of men from 
whom an industrious, home-loving woman 
would choose the father of her children. 

Of course there will have to be a 
series of articles written by women for 
the leading magazines on "What Has 
the Higher Education Done for 
Men?" The subject might be divided 
as follows: 

"Do our universities turn out good 
fathers?" 

"What is the relative health of col- 
lege-men and mechanics?" 

"Do the male graduates of our uni- 
versities have large families?" 

If these questions cannot be an- 
swered satisfactorily, it would be well 
to close to men most of our institu- 
tions of learning, since they can be of 
no practical use. 

It is easy to see from these few iri- 

96 



stances that women will be kept very A New 
busy for some time to come remodel- view ° 
ing our literature to meet the exigen- 
cies of the times, and in the meantime 
young men will have to be counseled 
a great deal by their elders before they 
will take in the situation and acquire 
the new point of view. A judicious 
father will talk to his son in this 
way: 

"My boy, I hope you will give up 
that bad habit of smoking. You may 
think nothing of it at present, but, let 
me tell you, women don't like tobacco. 
They may not say very much about it, 
but no woman wants to kiss a man 
whose lips and teeth are yellow and 
whose moustache is discolored and 
smoky. I'm very much afraid, my 
boy, if you go on, that no nice girl will 
marry you. Think of that ! " 

Of course it will be a trifle hard at 
first for young men, when they decide 
on their career and confide their glow- 
ing aspirations and ambitions to some 
sage and experienced elder, to have 
him shake his head and say: 

97 



A New "Don't do it, my boy, don't do it. 

m view You'll find it will not please women." 
"Please women! Well, women be 
— displeased then. That's what I 
want to do, and it's what I can do, and 
it's what I'm going to do. Women 
are all very well in their way, but I'm 
not going to fashion my affairs to suit 
them. They can take me or leave 
me!" 

"My dear fellow, they'll do both. 
You'd better listen to me. If you do 
as you say, you're very likely never to 
find a wife. Women don't like these 
enterprises; they want you to be just 
the kind of man their fathers were: 
good and quiet and conservative. Did 
you ever notice how women love their 
fathers? Well, you must try to be 
exactly like them — it's the only way 
to please women." 

It will perhaps be many years be- 
fore men will learn how to address an 
assemblage of women under the new 
regime. Habits are stubborn things 
and just how a man can talk to women 
without telling them he is heartily in 

98 



favor of everything they are trying to A New 
do to improve themselves, because it y?ew ° 
will aid them in the training of their 
sons, I for one am at a loss to imagine. 
It is just possible that great persist- 
ence on the part of women in encour- 
aging men to develop themselves 
mentally, morally and physically, not 
from any inherent desire for perfec- 
tion but that they may thereby fit 
themselves to bring up their daugh- 
ters to be good and great women, may 
serve to divert the mind of the aver- 
age masculine orator from his pet 
theme. This, however, will be long 
after we are all dead. 

In the meantime women should 
lose no time in formulating their con- 
ception of a manly man, that men may 
set about conforming to their stan- 
dards. To do this thoroughly they 
must begin in the nursery, and reverse 
the first two maxims of child-train- 
ing, so that in the future we may hear: 
"Oh come come! Little boys should- 
n't," and "Oh, never mind. Girls will 
be girls!" 

99 



A New 

Point of 

View 



If men ever become restive under 
the exactions of women they must 
find comfort in the fact that they are 
living up to the ideals of what they 
have always insisted is the better half 
of the race, and if this does not con- 
sole them for not being allowed to de- 
cide on questions of their own nature 
and instincts they may add to it the 
reflection that they must be good or 
they will not get married. This latter 
reflection, we can assure them, will 
sustain them through a good many 
ages of subjection. It will make them 
modest, unassuming, industrious and 
affectionate, and after a few genera- 
tions they will begin to meet and talk 
about their own virtues, and tell each 
other how much better than women 
they are, and shed tears over each 
other because they love their children, 
and talk in public of what a powerful 
emotion paternal love is, and boast 
about their "influence," and wind up 
by concluding that they hold the des- 
tinies of the world in their fists. 

When they have reached this high 



100 



degree of moral perfection, coupled A New 
with meekness, we shall fully under- view ° 
stand the poet's assurance that "noth- 
ing doth so become a man as modest 
sweetness and humility." 



101 



THE MODERN HEROINE 

Those of us who have reached that 
modest summit called middle life and 
sit fanning ourselves and surveying 
the landscape before starting down 
hill, may I think find wholesome dis- 
cipline in being called upon now and 
then to speak a word to those behind 
us in years though often in naught 
else. Indeed I am not certain but that 
the benefit is largely to the speaker 
rather than to the hearer. There are 
useful lessons to be derived from the 
process of overhauling that accumula- 
tion of odds and ends which we refer 
to rather proudly at times as our ex- 
perience, and these lessons become 
emphatic, even poignant, if we have 
in view selecting therefrom something 
that would prove valuable to us were 
we allowed another start. Too often 
they bring us face to face with the 
probability that the often longed-for 

102 



privilege of "beginning again" would The Modern 
result in an entirely new and original 
set of blunders. 

I have been driven to these rather 
somber reflections by thinking over 
all the subjects upon which I have at 
various times written and spoken with 
a view to improving the minds but 
principally the morals of my contem- 
poraries. Most of them were intend- 
ed to bring about much-needed social 
reform. Let me allay your fears by 
stating that none of them has been 
entirely successful. The world is still 
quite a comfortable, even pleasant 
place of residence in spite of my ef- 
forts, and it is with a very distinct 
sense of relief that I find myself sur- 
rounded by those who are forming 
their world, instead of reforming it. 

Properly, old age ought to be a 
subject of interest to us all, since we 
are all working toward it, but curi- 
ously enough it is not. I leave you to 
account for my certainty that the 
young woman, and preeminently the 
American young woman, interests all 

103 



The Modern of us. I have therefore chosen to 
speak of her as portrayed by, but more 
especially as suggestive of, our mod- 
ern fiction. You will pardon me if I 
wander at will from realism to reality, 
from the portrait to the model, from 
the heroine to the young woman her- 
self. 

The morality of our own fiction, 
which has often been ascribed to the 
omnipresence of our young women, is 
certainly not to our discredit, how- 
ever much the advocate of erotic fer- 
vor may strive to convince us that it 
is; and if her censorship continues to 
keep it free from the cheap effects of 
intrigue and passion, not only art but 
society will be still more in her debt. 

I have said that the young woman 
interests all of us. Individually, I do 
not know that she is more interesting 
than her brother. I have not found 
her so, although young men have re- 
peatedly assured me that she is. But 
collectively, by reason of the transi- 
tion state of society, she is something 

104 



more of a problem than heretofore. The Modem 
And the spirit which leads us to write erome 
of her with a capital Y and a capital 
W must of necessity react upon her 
individually. Or have I reversed mat- 
ters, and is it the fact that she is be- 
ginning to write herself in larger type 
that has forced the problem upon us? 
It would be strange if, with all the 
prominence that has been given her of 
late in talk and in print, she were not 
a trifle self-conscious, a little over- 
sure of herself. In the face of the 
charity and even love with which we 
have always regarded these youth- 
ful traits in her brother, we can hardly 
condemn them in her. And since we 
make no secret of the fact that she in- 
terests us we must not be surprised 
that she finds herself interesting. 
That she bears our inquisitive and 
somewhat impertinent scrutiny with 
singular dignity and good nature we 
must all acknowledge; and if there is 
in this at times a suggestion that she 
is sublimely indifferent to it, we may 
encourage ourselves with the thought 

105 



The Modern that she must be developing naturally, 
since nature is always profoundly un- 
concerned as to our opinions. Per- 
haps after all she does not really know 
how much we are thinking of her, and 
the seeming indifference may be a 
blissful unconsciousness. If this is so, 
then I trust this paper may not 
awaken her to any nervous anxiety or 
disturb by so much as a ripple her 
charming tranquillity. 

In speaking of the heroine I have 
no desire, even if it were possible, to 
ignore the modern hero. I have gen- 
erally found him lurking in the im- 
mediate vicinity, and there is little 
probability that this occasion will 
prove an exception. If he is not quite 
so often on our pens and tongues, it 
is not that he is less often in our 
thoughts, but rather that we have 
learned what to expect of him and 
have decided to let him work out his 
own problem in his own way. Just 
how long it will be before we treat our 
young woman in the same way no one 
can perhaps say; but her increasing 

106 



Lerome 



fitness and willingness to control her The Modern 
own destiny makes it probable that 
the time is not far distant. 

So much has been said and written 
concerning feminine complexity that 
women themselves have almost come 
to think their mental plan more in- 
tricate than that of man. The actions 
of men are unquestionably simpler 
and more unconstrained than those of 
women, but the difference is, I think, 
easily accounted for by the firm 
ground upon which every young man 
finds himself at the outset of life. Just 
what he will do or how he will suc- 
ceed in it may be and generally is 
problematical, but all his doubts are 
founded upon one unvarying and un- 
disputable fact — that his life will be 
what he makes it. His successes and 
his failures alike will be his own; the 
former a source of justifiable pride, 
the latter to be borne without whim- 
pering, since he alone is responsible. 

Now, let any young man, by a vio- 
lent effort of the imagination, substi- 
tute for this wholesome certainty a 

107 



The Modern nebulous uncertainty concerning his 
erome f uturej an uncertainty in all things 
save one: that it will in no way de- 
pend upon his merit; that his success 
or failure may hinge upon something 
as trivial as the curve of his eyebrows 
or the way in which his hair ripples 
above them. I say let him imagine 
this, if he can, and ask himself what 
inconsistencies of behavior would 
result. 

As for myself, the longer I live the 
more my wonder grows that our girls 
are as self-poised, as reasonable, as 
straightforward as they are, in view of 
the haze of irresponsibility and uncer- 
tainty with which we surround them. 
I know households in which young 
girls are allowed to drift through 
daily life with less definite purpose 
than a poodle. They help a little, they 
make their own simple gowns, they 
practice something called music, and 
presently, after groping about in inan- 
ity for a few years, they concentrate 
their energies on invalidism as an oc- 
cupation, in which neither ability, 

108 



education, capital nor industry are re- The Modem 
quired, and which must therefore be eroine 
distinctively feminine. 

Suppose we should try this plan 
with a son: teach him to be nice and 
tidy and make his summer coats and 
darn his stockings; let him take banjo 
lessons; tell him his highest duty is to 
be a good husband and father and 
carefully conceal from him all the 
facts and duties of paternity for fear 
of "brushing the bloom from his 
youth"; teach him directly or indi- 
rectly that the one success of his life 
lies in matrimony, and that matri- 
mony depends primarily upon good 
looks; compare his eyebrows with the 
eyebrows of the other boys in his set, 
and every time a boy comes about the 
house discuss his personal appearance 
carefully and in detail with your son; 
have his friends divided into "real 
pretty boys" and boys who are "not 
pretty but have good figures," and a 
few boys who (poor creatures) are 
not at all pretty but kind-hearted and 
pleasant. I cannot give you all the 

109 



The Modern instructions, never having had any 
erolne daughters, but most of you can fill out 
the other details from memory. 

At the risk of extreme cruelty in 
the interests of science, I should like 
to subject one young man to that 
which awaits numbers of young wo- 
men; I should like to send him home 
from college with something like this : 

"Now that you have completed 
your education, I trust you will settle 
down contentedly and help your 
father. Of course I do not expect you 
to thoroughly learn his business; 
there will be ample time for that when 
you have a store or an office of your 
own. But I hope you will cheerfully 
assist him, without salary beyond your 
board and clothes, and in the mean- 
time pick up such information as you 
can concerning his duties. 

"Do not, however, upon any con- 
sideration betray any desire to under- 
take his work, no matter how compe- 
tent you may become. This would be 
extremely improper. In other words, 
prepare yourself surreptitiously for a 

110 



certain line of life, and carefully re- The Modern 
frain from applying for it." 

Is it not possible that under this 
bewildering system our young man 
might become just a trifle "complex"? 

That the young woman of today, 
both in life and in literature, is often 
rather puzzlingly complex I freely ad- 
mit. That she is sometimes unduly 
introspective, full of vague question- 
ings and unsatisfactory replies, a crea- 
ture of eager desire for knowledge 
and of few opportunities to apply it, 
of consequent restlessness and fever- 
ish and unsatisfying activity — all of 
us who know and love her can testify. 
But that she will outgrow this, not by 
throwing it aside but by adapting it to 
her use and in so doing gain strength 
without losing her charm, I at least 
am fully persuaded. 

Certainly, with all her faults, she is 
a much better companion both in and 
out of fiction since she ceased to 
swoon and learned to swim; and even 
the man who thinks he likes the old- 
fashioned girl would, I suspect, find 

111 



Heroine 



TheModern himself rather helpless if fainting 
should, so to speak, be revived and 
become chronic with the modern ath- 
letic heroine. 

Glancing over recent English and 
American novels, and calling to mind 
the elegantly restrained emotions of 
Evelina and Cecilia, one cannot but 
wonder whether women or only nov- 
elists have changed their ways so pro- 
digiously in a brief one hundred years. 

For the enlightenment of those 
who are unfamiliar with such scenes, 
I will state that the following is a de- 
scription of a proposal of marriage 
from the pen of Miss Burney, as writ- 
ten by the heroine in a letter to her 
father: 

"My lord," cried I, endeavoring to dis- 
engage my hand, "pray let me go." 

"I will," cried he, to my inexpressible 
confusion dropping upon one knee, "if you 
wish me to leave you." 

"Oh, my lord," exclaimed I, "rise, I be- 
seech you, rise. Such a posture to me — 
surely your lordship is not so cruel as to 
mock me." 

"Mock you," repeated he earnestly ; "no, 
I revere you ! I esteem and I admire you 

112 



above all human beings, you are the friend The Modern 
to whom my soul is attached as to its bet- Heroine 
ter half, you are the most amiable, the most 
perfect of women, and you are dearer to me 
than language has the power of telling." 

I attempt not to describe my sensations 
at that moment ; I scarce breathed ; I 
doubted if I existed; the blood forsook my 
cheeks, and my feet refused to sustain me. 
Lord Orville, hastily rising, supported me 
to a chair, upon which I sank almost lifeless. 

I have not, for some years at least, 
been present upon such an occasion, 
but something in the walk and conver- 
sation of the twentieth-century young 
woman leads me to think that regular 
gymnastic exercise, with a moderate 
allowance of basket-ball, tennis and 
golf would save her from a total col- 
lapse even under these trying cir- 
cumstances. 

Every woman knows that the 
great struggle of life is to stand 
bravely up before emotion, not to be 
swept away by it. Why should we 
not teach our girls to build their lives 
firm and strong, as we try to teach our 
boys, knowing all the whirlwinds of 
feeling that must try their strength, 

113 



Heroine 



TheModern and leaving marriage out of the ques- 
tion? They will marry, no doubt, but 
when they do, let it be because some- 
thing stronger than the structure they 
have built sweeps it away, and not be- 
cause of the first gust of feeling that 
blows through their vacant lives. 
Women suffer enough already from 
strained emotion; they are not con- 
tent to be happy as men are; they 
want to be tragically happy; they 
want, alas, "to be understood" — as if 
any human being ever enjoyed that 
luxury. 

Passing in review that notable list 
of women created by George Eliot, 
we see in Dorothea Brooke and Gwen- 
dolen Grandcourt — two of the most 
pathetic figures in literature — a faint 
foreshadowing of the young woman 
of today. Poor Dorothea, with her 
capacity for devotion, her singleness 
of purpose, her scorn of pettiness, 
groping in the damp mist of useless- 
ness that surrounded the English gen- 
tlewoman! And walking beside her, 

114 



in that strange blindness to his own The Modern 
needs and to her efficiency, Lydgate, eroine 
who sees in Rosamund Vincy's beauty 
everything that is gracious and wo- 
manly — everything that Dorothea is 
and Rosamund is not! Perhaps times 
have not and will never change 
greatly in this; and if a certain type 
of self-sufficient masculinity continues 
to remain afraid of the young woman 
of too many ideas (I believe he gen- 
erally calls them "notions") it is only 
fair that he should bear without sym- 
pathy the hopeless vacuity that must 
be fairly maddening when twenty-five 
or thirty years have robbed it of 
curves and dimples and distracting 
pink-and-whiteness. 

In spite of the oft-repeated charge 
that women are unfair to each other 
in life, we have little reason to com- 
plain of such injustice in literature. 
Sometimes, as in Mrs. Ward's Eli- 
nor, we suspect an unfairness that 
amounts to partiality for her own sex, 
and her portrait of Lucy ought to go 
a long way in refuting any charge of 

115 






The Modern lack of appreciation of the American 
girl on the part of the cultivated Eng- 
lishwoman. Lucy may be a New- 
England type; let us hope she is; but 
whether she is or not it is comforting 
to know that Mrs. Ward thinks she is. 
If one feels doubtful of Lucy's re- 
ality, the picture that Miss Wilkins 
has given in "The Portion of Labor" 
of Ellen Brewster, sprung from even 
lower conditions, is certainly reassur- 
ing. I wish I were able to say con- 
fidently that innate refinement would 
in the average girl thus survive the 
constant presence of vulgarity. But 
I cannot. Lucy and Ellen may be true 
to life, but they are not average girls. 
More than that, I fear they are some- 
what infrequent even in that unde- 
fined region above the average. 

It is not the portrayal of women, 
either young or old, that has given 
Mr. Howells his fame as an American 
novelist. But, looking over the girls 
to whom he has introduced us, we 
must allow that they are quite as in- 
teresting as those to whom we could 

116 



introduce him if he were to come The Modern 

T r* i • (it Heroine 

among us. Imogen Graham in In- 
dian Summer" is certainly deliciously 
young, and her avowed "love for 
weird things" has a strangely familiar 
sound. Alice in "April Hopes," with 
her overwrought conscience, though 
not a familiar type among us, is no 
doubt a legitimate survival of puri- 
tanism. Lydia Blood is certainly 
rather colorless for a heroine, but this 
detracts in no way from the interest 
of what happens to her. And then he 
has given us the two young women 
in "The Landlord at Lion's Head" — I 
have forgotten their names — both of 
whom are quite delightfully subtle in 
their different ways. And Kitty in "A 
Chance Acquaintance," thoroughly 
wholesome and likable; and the Lap- 
ham girls, whom we all recognize 
whether we like them or not. Indeed, 
the list, although somewhat common- 
place, is just such as any young man 
might make, if early fame should call 
upon him to enumerate the young 
women who have influenced him. 

117 



The Modern I do not discover that the popular 

belief that young women are becom- 
ing too independent to be lovable is 
borne out by the popular novel. Love 
and marriage seem to hold their own 
as the dominating theme of fiction, 
and while both hero and heroine an- 
alyze their affection in the most 
searching fashion, and seem disposed 
(no doubt as a result of higher educa- 
tion) to test it scientifically as well as 
emotionally, the conclusion seems 
usually to be that it is practically in- 
destructible. 

Indeed there is something almost 
pathetic in the determination with 
which we all cling to the belief that 
the truly noble love but once. The 
fact that we have all been in love 
many times seems not in the least to 
affect the fervor of this belief. The 
young woman whose pathway is 
strewn with the fragments of broken 
engagements speaks with scorn of the 
heroine who does not remain true to 
her first love through endless compli- 
cations; and the solid citizen laughs 

118 



with his matronly wife over the hope- The Modem 
less grief that submerged his youth erome 
when the village doctor's daughter 
walked up the aisle to wed his rival — 
"Just a fancy, a boyish fancy, my 
dear"; and his wife smiles serenely 
and says, "Oh, yes, of course," with 
calm disregard of the night she stood 
on the veranda and said, "Forever, yes, 
forever," to the druggist's clerk. They 
recovered; therefore it was not love; 
and yet the man knows that if the 
doctor's daughter had smiled upon 
him he would have made her the same 
considerate husband he has always 
been; and the good wife would have 
been an equally serene good wife to the 
druggist's clerk. One absorbing love 
at a time is about all we exact of real 
life, but for purposes of romance a dis- 
appointment that allows itself to be 
mitigated by time is beneath con- 
tempt. We will have none of it, in 
books. 

At the risk of irrelevances (which 
I have studiously avoided thus far) I 
want to warn the modern young wo- 

119 



The Modern man against a variation of this idea 
that recently came to my notice in a 
novel by a very promising and popular 
author. The heroine of this realistic 
sketch, who seemed to be in high fa- 
vor with the writer, announces herself 
calmly as so much in love with two 
men at once as to render it rank injus- 
tice to marry either while the other 
lives. This hopeless predicament is 
relieved only when one of the men, 
with that eagerness for self-sacrifice 
that characterizes his sex, betakes 
himself to a remote island of the sea 
and sends word that he is dead. 
Whereupon, after a period of what 
might be called half mourning, the 
young woman marries the other man, 
only to have the first return, thus in- 
volving her in most distressing emo- 
tional complications. The time which 
I was permitted to have this volume 
from the circulating library unhappily 
expired at this juncture, and it was 
torn from my grasp; but I gleaned 
from an exhaustive review in a lead- 
ing periodical that the husband suc- 

120 



Heroine 



cumbed to the hopelessness of the The Modem 
situation and took his turn at dying, 
whereupon the widow bestowed her 
left hand, so to speak, upon the other. 
Now, frankly, I prefer the old 
deathless-and-eternal love-theory, no 
matter how fallacious it may be, to 
this sort of emotional mathematics; 
and I mention the subject only in the 
hope of discouraging any tendency 
that may be cropping up among 
young women in real life (upon which 
of course the novelist always draws 
for his material) to love one man with 
the right ventricle of her heart and 
another with the left. 

Candidly, this whole subject of 
marriage, which has formed such a 
large part of fiction in times past, is, I 
think, destined to see great changes in 
the future. The vaguely distressing 
rumors, which some of you may have 
heard, of the great decline and prob- 
able decay of this institution I some- 
times think you do not regard with 
the proper degree of solemnity. To 

121 



Heroine 



TheModern avert this catastrophe it will be abso- 
lutely necessary for young men to face 
the fact that they are socially in a very 
bad way. Indeed, there is every rea- 
son to believe that they must remodel 
their entire line of conduct and ac- 
quire a new and very complex system 
of tactics. To please a woman who is 
anxious to be pleased is one thing, but 
to please a woman who is so pleased 
with herself that she doesn't feel the 
need of your efforts is an entirely dif- 
ferent matter. It is very evident that 
the hero of the future has no easy task 
before him. 

As for the young woman, with 
this upheaval of all our former preju- 
dices on her hands, would it not be un- 
reasonable for us to exact of her 
the cultivation of her grandmother's 
graces? If the manners of men 
toward her and hers toward them 
have changed a little in ways that 
seem to us sometimes for the worse, 
is it quite fair to lay the blame always 
on her shoulders? Is it not possible 
that she is simply rebelling a little 

122 



against carrying more than her share The Modern 
of the world's morals, and may not 
the lofty scorn of her young inde- 
pendence prove in the end a more 
healthful influence than the helpless 
tears of her former dependence? 

Whether it does or not, we must 
face the fact that life has changed for 
both the hero and the heroine. They, 
like the rest of us, are more or less in 
the grip of inanimate things, and it is 
unfair for us to try them by the stan- 
dards of the past. The manners of the 
last century would be affectation in 
this; the occupations of fifty years 
ago have been taken from men and 
women alike, by the relentless march 
of discovery and invention; but the 
goodness and honor and devotion and 
candor of the soul remain untouched. 

For the hero I can speak but super- 
ficially ; he seems to me to have gained 
both mentally and morally since my 
youth. But for the heroine, both in 
books and out of them, I can say with 
sincerity and knowledge that she is a 
more gracious and helpful girl, makes 

123 



The Modern a better wife and wiser mother if she 
erome marr i eS) an^ }f no i ) a happier and 

more useful woman than the girl of 
twenty years ago. 






124 



THE WAY TO ALTRURIA 

The time is past when the consci- 
entious student of social conditions 
may ignore Altruria. The fact that it 
never existed, and never will exist as 
some have pictured it, does not pre- 
vent its widespread influence on the 
thought of today. Doubts have been 
cast upon the existence of Heaven and 
Hell, and yet the most rigorous 
doubter does not deny the potentiality 
of these two ideas in the world's 
growth. None of us are opposed 
to Heaven, constructed according to 
our own plans and specifications, but 
most of us have well-grounded objec- 
tions to Hell; and in our efforts 
to enforce these objections we have 
not found it advisable to ignore the 
prevalent belief. Possibly the be- 
lief in Altruria is not so prevalent, 
but in any case it cannot be safely 
ignored. 

125 



The Way Every man or woman who can ap- 
pear before an audience of semi-intel- 
ligent citizens, harassed as most citi- 
zens are by the daily struggle with 
hampering conditions, and paint for 
them a seductive picture of social life 
free from daily fight with all that is 
evil in human nature and obdurate in 
human circumstances, is almost cer- 
tain of a hearing and a following. It 
is far easier to paint such a picture 
than to tell the halting steps by which 
this blessedness is to be reached. But 
men and women who are tired of the 
struggle, more especially those who 
have been worsted in the struggle, are 
not exacting as to how, so that the end 
described be soothing to self-love and 
sufficiently brilliant to the imagina- 
tion. Naturalists have repeatedly as- 
serted that angels could not fly with 
feathered wings, but thus far they 
have had no appreciable effect on the 
average Easter-card. 

A modern critic has said that the 
world of art is divided between "a 
passion for perfection and a madness 

126 



for reform." This might truthfully be The Way 

• j f -1 j*j_* 11 o to Altruria 

said of social conditions as well, so- 
ciety has ailments many and serious, 
not more serious than of old but seri- 
ous nevertheless. Indeed it would 
sometimes seem that as the burden 
grows lighter we resent it more; we 
begin to ask, "Why any burden at 
all?" It is only those who are climb- 
ing upward that busy themselves in 
computing the distance yet to climb, 
and to them it seems long and weari- 
some. That we magnify the poverty, 
disease, suffering and injustice about 
us is proof conclusive that we are get- 
ting on. We will not admit as did our 
forefathers that God cursed man and 
assigned him as his noblest duty the 
patient acceptance of his curse. So 
far has humanity advanced, that we 
begin to peer through the mists ahead 
for the shores of Utopia, to think and 
talk of it as possible; to seek remedies, 
to resent our aches and pains, to listen 
to a multitude of counselors in the 
hope of finding wisdom. We have 
reached, in short, the "passion for per- 

127 



The Way fection," and all this is legitimate and 

to Altruria i • 11 

desirable. 

Our age shows strange contrasts 
of the faith-cure, agnosticism and 
ritualism, of Calvinism and theosophy, 
of individualism and collectivism. We 
are all bound for perfection, each on 
his own flying-machine, or trudging 
along on his old-fashioned legs. And 
we are getting on. This point I wish 
to emphasize. 

It has become so much the fashion 
for speakers and writers to draw at- 
tention to our social ailments that I 
think we are in danger of over-esti- 
mating them. Most of us have heard 
so much of the cruelty and injustice 
exercised toward the workingman 
that we are surprised to hear a carpen- 
ter or a blacksmith whistle. Our 
hearts ache for fear we are the oppres- 
sors. The average reformer delights 
in representing society on its way 
down hill with the brake out of order 
and a yawning chasm at the bottom. 
Orators do not hesitate to assure us 
that we are on the eve of a great civil 

128 



conflict: that bloodshed is inevitable; The Way 

1 i 1 1 •, 1 j toAltruna 

that labor and capital are arrayed 
against each other — in other words, 
that the muscle in a man's arm and the 
money in his pocket are thirsting for 
each other's blood. 

In the midst of these rumblings 
from the platform and the press it is 
somewhat refreshing to call to mind 
the fact that thirty to forty millions of 
the American people live in honest, 
self-respecting content; that even in 
East London, which has long been a 
synonym for poverty and suffering, 
sixty-two per cent, according to Presi- 
dent Eliot, "live in comfort with an 
upward tendency." In 1890 only one- 
third of the population of the United 
States lived in settlements of four 
thousand or over. The tendency to 
closer grouping is marked, however, 
and 1900 will no doubt show a decided 
increase in the proportion of towns- 
men to countrymen.* This is perhaps 
an evil, but the main point, that we 

* This proportion, according to the census, was 
62.7 to 37.3. 

129 



The Way are getting on, is not to be ignored. 
o truna ^y e are ^ Q0 rea( j v ^ accept the saying 

that "the poor are getting poorer and 
the rich richer," and we should save 
ourselves from the pessimism which 
seems ready to declare that whatever 
is, is wrong. 

Not long ago I received one of 
those elaborately illustrated and be- 
decked New Year editions of a paper 
published in a western town that I 
knew quite well twenty years ago. 
The town had no boom; indeed, I do 
not think it has grown noticeably in 
twenty years. But as I looked at the 
cuts of the ornate modern residences 
I noted that nearly all of them were 
owned by men I had known as clerks, 
porters and mechanics in their youth. 
No one seemed to be grinding the 
faces of the poor in that town. The 
price of labor has not decreased these 
latter years, and honesty, industry, 
energy and all that goes to make a 
successful man or woman do not seem 
to be trodden under foot. 

We are all aware of these facts, 

130 



and yet we are also aware of a prevail- The Way 

j- ,■ r ,■ ,1 to Altruria 

mg dissatisfaction, a restless some- 
thing which in old-fashioned language 
used to be called envy, but which in 
these latter days politicians speak of 
respectfully as social discontent. 

Women, through the undue culti- 
vation of their sympathies and the 
consequent neglect of the study of 
cause and effect, have become largely 
the originators of philanthropic ac- 
tivity today. Add to this the nature 
of their occupation, which permits of 
leisure and interruption, and we find 
them the natural leaders of philan- 
thropy. They are the dispensers of 
charity as they are of hospitality. 
Starting with the idea of making their 
families comfortable, they have broad- 
ened with civilization into the idea of 
making the world comfortable; and 
with this in view they must of neces- 
sity study the discomforts of society. 

Now a morbid contemplation of 
the world's suffering is in effect al- 
most as bad as total indifference. In- 
deed it often results in that feeling of 

131 



The Way absolute helplessness which is ready 
to tram to p roc i a i m a u our conditions false 

and to sit with folded hands waiting 
if not actually wishing for a grand up- 
heaval and readjustment. This is 
latent anarchy. There are actually in 
existence societies calling themselves 
Anarchists, who have reached exactly 
this state of helpless pessimism. I at- 
tended one of their meetings, and 
nothing could have been farther from 
the accepted idea of a wild-eyed, 
bomb-throwing anarchist than were 
the mild-voiced men and women I met 
there. "Nothing can be done, in our 
present conditions," they said, "the 
social structure cannot be made over; 
it must be torn down and rebuilt." 
True, they had no idea of taking an 
active part in tearing down, but their 
very attitude of expectancy was an en- 
couragement to the countless agita- 
tors who were thirsting for the excite- 
ment of destruction. "Well, what else 
can you expect ? " they asked when the 
strikers in Chicago were ruthlessly de- 
stroying property. 

132 



Now it seems to me that every in- The Way 



dividual who has in mind a state of 
society that seems to him desirable 
and possible, if he does not give us the 
steps by which in his opinion that 
state of society may be evolved out of 
that which now exists, should reso- 
lutely keep his theories to himself, or 
acknowledge himself what he really 
is: a dangerous agitator, a promoter 
of disease without the suggestion of a 
remedy. The cherishing of ideals that 
cannot be realized is harmful to the 
individual because it diverts him from 
the good he might accomplish, and it 
is harmful to society because there are 
thousands ready to seize upon his 
ideal regardless of its impossibilities 
and to hold others responsible for its 
non-accomplishment. 

Everyone, then, who cherishes an 
Altruria is bound to show us so far 
as in him lies the way to reach it. And 
to do this he must not point us to 
paths that begin across a chasm that 
we cannot bridge. He must join his 
paths to those in which we stand, must 

133 



to Altruria 



The Way in short tell us the next step. Men 
start from where they are, not from 
where they ought to be. Of course, if 
one comes down to the bottom fact, 
we all ought to be as the angels in 
heaven, and absolutely nothing stands 
in the way of that consummation but 
the individual himself. The trifling 
fact that a large proportion of people 
do not want to be angels is calmly set 
aside by many of these would-be Al- 
trurians as the fault of the state and 
something that the state ought to 
remedy: the criminal is morally de- 
fective and should be coddled by the 
government because of his defects; 
the drunkard is the result of bad legis- 
lation and should be excused from per- 
sonal responsibility in consequence; 
the tramp is a problem to be legislated 
upon instead of a pest to be eradi- 
cated; in short, crime, vice and idle- 
ness are the results of bad laws and 
the question of individual responsi- 
bility is not to be considered. I am 
at a loss to know why the fact that 
under this same government individu- 

134 



als rise from penury to wealth and live The Way 
lives of virtue and sobriety is not 
urged as a direct result of legislation 
as well as the contrary is. 

While gravity remains we shall fall 
down when we lose our balance. Nat- 
ural law precludes perfect happiness. 
Such Altruria as we may command, 
then, will be at best limited and un- 
certain. But in view of our present 
progress we may look forward to the 
evolution of a much better state of 
things. And as the first step in this 
evolution we must all do better work 
rather than less of it. It is poor work 
rather than lack of work that is hold- 
ing the world back, and the only rem- 
edy for poor workmanship is increase 
of personal responsibility rather than 
relief from it. I hired a man last week 
to hoe weeds for me at a dollar and a 
half a day, and in the evening after I 
had paid him I found he had hoed out 
plants that cost me four dollars and a 
half. True, he was none the richer, 
and no doubt he found it as hard to 
get rid of a two-dollar plant as a 

135 



The Way worthless weed, but the experience 
suggested to me some doubts as to the 
dignity of labor in the abstract. 
Labor is dignified just in proportion 
to the conscience and intelligence that 
go into it and no farther. 

Furthermore, since the social dis- 
content of today comes from ungrati- 
fied wants, the question arises as to 
whether the trouble lies in the nature 
of the demand or the character of the 
supply. No doubt we shall find it a 
mixture of the two, and it is the duty 
of every thoughtful man and woman 
to aid in increasing legitimate gratifi- 
cation and decreasing illegitimate de- 
mand. To do this intelligently one 
must study closely the effect of certain 
possessions and deprivations on his 
own happiness and that of others, and 
ask himself seriously whether the ob- 
jects for which thousands are striving 
— for which he himself is perhaps 
striving — simply from the pressure 
behind and about him, are, properly 
considered, means of happiness. 

Looking the matter squarely in the 

136 



to Altruria 



face, is it not incomprehensible that a The Way 
sensitive, high-minded woman should 
wear an atrociously ugly thing rather 
than make herself conspicuous by ad- 
hering to what she finds tasteful, ar- 
tistic, healthful and personally becom- 
ing? That she is conspicuous when 
she refuses to comply with the de- 
mands of the prevailing fashion is an- 
other disgrace which women could 
easily remove by cooperation and mu- 
tual support. I insist upon it that 
pockets are the basis of man's mental 
superiority, and I defy any man to 
carry his purse in his hand and keep 
his head level for one afternoon; and 
I here make my bow of profoundest 
respect to American men, that they 
have kept their respect for American 
women in spite of our countless in- 
sanities that go by the name of 
fashions. 

When anyone tells us that the 
manufacture of all these unlovely 
things gives employment to thou- 
sands, we can only shake our heads 
wearily and think of all the beautiful 

137 



The Way and necessary things these same thou- 
to truna sanc j s m ight De making to meet a 

wholesome demand — to make the 
world really richer. And no one has 
a right to evade the responsibility that 
is rightfully his, to increase by one the 
demand for what is neither beautiful 
nor useful, thus diverting labor from 
legitimate uses. 

The worst of the follies of the rich 
is that of misleading the poor into 
thinking that the mere display of 
wealth gives happiness. Thousands 
are led into expenditures that bring 
nothing but anxiety by the constant 
recital in the gossiping columns of the 
daily press of details of fashionable 
folly, which the participants them- 
selves know to be absolutely without 
pleasure. Now I will leave it to any- 
one who has once been poor and has 
passed through the intermediate 
stages to a competence, or to wealth, 
as a result of his own efforts — was 
happiness not distributed all along the 
way, with perhaps a more lavish be- 
stowal nearer the beginning than 

138 



toward the end? I blame the would- The Way 

, to Altruna 

be reformer, whether rich or poor, 
who attributes the inequalities of hap- 
piness to the inequalities of wealth. 
He has a narrow soul whose honest lit- 
tle is embittered by his neighbor's 
affluence, and he has a narrower soul 
who thinks his own affluence neces- 
sarily sweeter than his neighbor's lit- 
tle. It would be a terrible calamity to 
the world if no one in it were allowed 
to become richer than some of us wish 
or deserve to be. 

The morally healthy take pleasure 
in the diversity of rewards. Accep- 
tance of one's limitations is the part of 
a well-balanced mind. I do not know 
which would be more humiliating to 
such a mind, to be weighed down by 
its inferiors or to know itself a dead 
weight on its superiors. Success 
makes people happy, not wealth. So 
far as money indicates the accomplish- 
ment of one's purpose, it brings hap- 
piness in exact proportion to the ben- 
eficence of that purpose. But the man 
who makes a good cart-wheel or de- 

139 



The Way velops a new rose or paints a good 
to truna pi c t ure or builds a good bridge, tastes 
the only sweetness that brings con- 
tent to the soul — the sweetness of 
giving out the best he has in store. 

We have exalted wealth to such a 
pinnacle in our country that the poor 
man, is gradually absolving himself 
from all sense of duty toward the rich 
man, and when any human being loses 
his sense of responsibility to any other 
human being he deteriorates imme- 
diately. Sympathy for the very rich 
is almost unknown; their sorrows, 
their joys, their most sacred and pri- 
vate affairs are dragged before the 
public and gloated over by those who 
ought to joy and sorrow with them. 
The conduct of the public in this mat- 
ter indicates either that we have lost 
all sense of personal dignity and re- 
sponsibility toward these our broth- 
ers, or else that we consider wealth a 
panacea for every ill known to the 
human heart. I suspect that igno- 
rant people take this latter view, and 
no one harboring such an idea is or 

140 



ever can be a good citizen, a faithful The Way 
employee or a just employer. 

This unjust estimate of the value 
of money is fostered by the constant 
recital of the doings of the rich, as if 
the very fact of wealth lent an inter- 
est to the detail of their lives. 

Why is it of more interest to the 
public that Mrs. Nabob gives a din- 
ner of sixteen courses to as many 
guests, than that Mrs. O'Flaherty en- 
tertains her neighbors on corned beef 
and cabbage? And why should Mrs. 
O'Flaherty's daughters, who work in 
a candy factory, be led to think that 
Mrs. Nabob's hospitality was better 
worth chronicling than their mother's 
modest but substantial effort? Why 
should their ideas of the true relation 
of things be distorted by the effort of 
the newspapers to make it appear that 
Mrs. Nabob's entertainment was more 
extravagant and dazzling than was 
actually the case? Why should there 
be "covers laid for sixteen" and why 
should Mrs. Nabob's second-season 
gown and the diamond pin her hus- 

141 



to Altruria 



The Way band gave her on their twenty-fifth 
anniversary (and for which extrava- 
gance they are economizing still) be 
described as "an elegant creation in 
violet silk and crepe de chine, orna- 
ments diamonds"? 

The newspapers tell us there is a 
demand for this sort of nonsense. 
There is a demand for bad air, judg- 
ing from the amount of it consumed; 
and for sour bread also, from the 
quantity eaten. But this does not ex- 
cuse those who supply the demand; 
neither can you and I excuse ourselves 
for being in any way instrumental in 
furthering this false estimate of the 
importance of the doings of the rich. 
If we are a part of the demand for de- 
tails of Mrs. Billionaire's divorce-suit, 
we are not one whit higher in the scale 
of social development than if we were 
eager to pry into our next-door neigh- 
bor's quarrel with his wife. 

As one of the first steps, then, 
toward a possible Altruria we must 
acquire a proper estimate of the value 
of wealth. Witnessing all these use- 

142 



less strivings, these false ambitions, The Way 
the heart-burnings and jealousies that 
have arisen from the pursuit of money, 
it is not strange that conscientious 
men and women have dreamed of do- 
ing away with it all by doing away 
with the inequalities of possession. 
But as the possession of things is not 
the basis of human happiness, their 
distribution could have no permanent 
effect upon it. What we all ought to 
desire is, not that all shall share alike, 
but that none shall want. If we are in 
a slough let us raise our foundations, 
not level our towers. And in order 
that no one shall want, the necessaries 
of life must be abundant and cheap. 
But you will find people the world 
over judging their wealth by the price 
they receive for what they sell instead 
of by the price they pay for what they 
buy. 

It is easy to see that good work 
well applied is the surest means of 
adding to the world's supply and pre- 
venting want. Good houses, well 
built and plenty of them, without 

143 



The Way defective flues, with windows that 
to Aitruria wQrk w i thout pro fanity, doors that do 

not bind — houses in short that stand 
for conscientious workmanship — 
would do more to enlist the coopera- 
tion of owner and workman than bla- 
tant oratory concerning the oppres- 
sion of capital. 

The respect for labor which grew 
out of conditions half a century ago is 
rapidly melting away in the face of 
poor work and dishonest material. 
Honest workmen are driven to the 
wall by a horde of agitators who in- 
sist that the world owes them a living. 
And until those workmen come to the 
front and refuse to accept the dicta- 
torship of their inferiors there will be 
trouble between labor and capital. 
There is no man of whom the poor 
workman, the dishonest mechanic is 
so afraid as of the man that does his 
work well; and under all his pretense 
of hatred of their mutual employer is 
hidden the fear of his skilled competi- 
tor, who would soon leave him behind 
in a fair field. 

144 



Every man or woman who has The Way 



built a house, who runs a ranch, who 
owns a mill, who keeps a store or who 
manages a house, knows that poor 
work is the curse of society today. We 
move on but slowly and painfully be- 
cause we are constantly stopping for 
repairs. We thought we had a door to 
go in and out of, a roof to keep out 
the rain, but the door sticks and delays 
us, the roof leaks, and the man that 
ought to be making a good door or a 
good roof for you must leave his work 
to repair mine. 

I visited last year in an inland dis- 
trict in the middle west where many 
things remain of the pioneer life that 
my family had known there fifty years 
ago. In many houses I saw chairs of 
a pattern now out of date. When I 
mentioned them the owner invariably 
said, "Yes, that's one of Jake Walga- 
mut's chairs. He made six (or eight, 
or ten) for us when we were married." 
They were good chairs. Jake Walga- 
mut is dead but his work stands. In 
forty years no one has had to leave 

145 



to Altruria 



The Way his own work to remedy the defects 
o runa ^ Jake's. There are six more chairs 
in many households today because 
Jake Walgamut lived. And they 
seemed to think more kindly of him in 
that vicinity than they did of Debs. 
As for myself I felt like hunting up his 
grave and erecting a monument to the 
early Altrurian: "The safety of the 
nation, the man who did his work 
well." 

The kingdom of heaven cometh 
not by legislation. If every clerk and 
stenographer and teacher and dress- 
maker and lawyer and housekeeper 
and plumber and statesman and car- 
penter would spend one-half the time 
rigidly examining himself to see that 
he is the very best possible man or 
woman, that he spends in traducing 
the government and society because 
his reward is not greater than his de- 
sert, Utopia would be upon us speedily 
and surely. We should hear more of 
work and less of wages. 

Every individual, then, who is 
making discoveries in science, acquir- 

146 



ing useful or artistic skill or promot- The Way 
ing conscience, is working toward Al- toAltruna 
truria. It is slow. Evolution is neces- 
sarily slow. But revolution is far 
slower. 

We should show infinite patience 
with the children, and uncompromis- 
ing justice with the adult. With 
adult wrongdoers, not persecution nor 
cruelty, but justice. Every tear of 
maudlin sentimentalism shed over a 
deliberate criminal turns to a stone in 
the pathway of the child you are try- 
ing to teach to do right. The moment 
we begin to hold circumstances re- 
sponsible for individual shortcomings 
we destroy the first principle of prog- 
ress, we license all that is evil. 

Every society calling itself altru- 
istic that withdraws itself from the 
world to exemplify its principles ac- 
knowledges itself unable to solve the 
problem. But any society that finds 
aid in the cooperation of those of simi- 
lar tastes and opinions is a legitimate 
factor in evolution, so long as it does 
not pronounce itself a solution, merely 

147 



The Way an aid. Voluntary cooperation will 
grow with civilization and involun- 
tary cooperation will decrease. The 
fewer obligations the individual is 
born into the higher the development 
of personality. The more obligations 
we assume voluntarily the greater our 
individual dignity, and the dignity of 
the state will always depend on that of 
the individual. All permanent good 
to the state must grow out of the de- 
velopment of individuality, not out of 
its suppression. And personal respon- 
sibility will always remain the most 
potent factor in the development of 
the individual. 

We witness today the strange 
spectacle of the most conscientious 
among us joining hands with the most 
conscienceless, in Altrurian projects: 
on the one hand, the men and women 
who, seeing others deprived of com- 
forts and luxuries, are eager to share 
with them; and, on the other, those 
who, failing by improvidence to accu- 
mulate, are eager to be parasites on 
the industrious. These two classes, 

148 



widely different as they are, occupy The Way 

1,1 a j •£ to Altruria 

common ground today. And even it 
they were equal in numbers the un- 
worthy would prevail in all their en- 
terprises, because improvidence can 
undo faster than providence can do. 

I would not be understood as un- 
derestimating the debt that progress 
owes to the enthusiast, the fanatic, the 
"crank" if you will; but I would have 
the world recognize that enthusiasm 
and good-will toward men are not 
synonymous with economic wisdom, 
and that the champion of the middle 
ground, who is always unknown to 
fame, is generally unknown to folly as 
well. To him is entrusted the carry- 
ing out of all schemes for the benefit 
of society, and upon him is heaped all 
the contumely of those who are rush- 
ing forward and of those who are pull- 
ing back. 

All things are not good that have 
good for their motto. And no matter 
how commendable their motives may 
be, I believe that the influence of those 
who are teaching the people to look to 

149 



The Way the government for a solution of all 
to truna j-j^jj. jjj s j s distinctly and increasingly 
harmful. 

We have as yet no proof whatever 
that if the rich were poorer the poor 
would be richer, but we have unmis- 
takable evidence that the effort of 
rich and poor alike to become richer 
has kept many of the poor from be- 
coming poorer. 

Every man or woman, then, who 
has the intelligence to discriminate be- 
tween what is real and what is false in 
the struggle for happiness, who has 
the self-respect to cut off false de- 
mands in his own case and encourage 
others to do so, and who furnishes a 
conscientious supply in such line as it 
is given him to work for his fellow- 
men — has found the way to Altruria 
and is traveling therein. 

If I were to tell you what seem to 
me false demands we might differ. 
There are many who conscientiously 
believe in seven-yard skirts, in ten- 
cent cigars, in docked horses, in gam- 
bling for vinaigrettes and paper- 

150 



knives, in a liveried "hired man," in The Way 
teas of many colors, in silk hats, in no to truna 
pockets, in middle-men, in formal 
calls, in champagne, in tight dresses 
(not tight but snug), in tall steeples 
and high heels. But however we may 
differ as to these things, I think we 
shall all sweetly agree that we like 
each other better, with all our follies, 
because of the freedom that enables us 
to be foolish as well as wise; and that 
when the day of sweet simplicity and 
frankness comes, the day of brother- 
hood of man and sisterhood of women, 
we shall enjoy that better by reason of 
its freedom — because it came by our 
own act and not by Act of Congress. 



151 



A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE 

Possibly every age, every state of 
society, bemoans its own moral decay; 
just as school trustees since the begin- 
ning of time have alleged the unusual 
badness of boys in their district. 
Strangely enough, we do not find 
along with this any deep-seated con- 
viction that the world is growing 
worse. Some of us, alas, are old 
enough to have to fight a little against 
the "when I was young" spirit, know- 
ing that most things are brighter 
when one is young and that we prob- 
ably knew less of evil then, as we knew 
less of everything; but even these, 
when we really think, recognize the 
general betterment of conditions, a 
betterment which assuredly does not 
indicate any rapid moral decay. Pub- 
lic institutions everywhere are better; 
the insane, the criminal, the pauper re- 
ceive more intelligent care; man is 

152 



thinking of his brother man, and if A Matter of 
morality has shifted its ground a lit- 
tle, it is, we have every reason to be- 
lieve, only a part of the lateral motion 
which accompanies progress. That 
the ship's furniture slides about and 
changes relations but indicates that 
the vessel is making its way through 
a heavy sea, not that it is sinking. 

If, therefore, we all agree, which is 
not likely, that there seems to be a lack 
of conscience among us today, we are 
not necessarily enrolling ourselves 
among pessimists, but are rather in 
the attitude of those who note the 
changing forms of evil that they may 
be the better prepared to defeat it. 

Conscience, as I understand it, is 
the impulse to do right because it is 
right, regardless of personal ends, and 
has nothing whatever to do with the 
ability to distinguish between right 
and wrong. A very sensitive con- 
science may coexist with a faulty 
judgment and lead the possessor con- 
scientiously to do wrong. Hence all 
those "well-meaning" people the cor- 

153 



A Matter of rection of whose blunders make up a 

Conscience i ,• r .* u , t 

large proportion of the world s work. 

Amid the increasing complexities 
of life it is not always easy to distin- 
guish right from wrong. Those who 
believe that human nature has been 
fitted out with an unerring instinct — 
a moral scent rather than a moral 
sense — seem to me largely respon- 
sible for the ethical bewilderment of 
large numbers of people not necessar- 
ily nor vitally immoral. 

I remember even yet with amaze- 
ment the warning of my grandfather 
when I was about to leave home on a 
very modest quest of better educa- 
tional advantage: "Be careful that 
you do not learn too much to be 
good," he said, from the standpoint of 
that theology which saw no relation 
between enlightenment and morals; 
which divided man into mental, moral 
and physical, mind, soul and body, and 
essayed to save the soul even if one 
lost his mind in the effort. If he looks 
down from the "gold bar of heaven" 
today, my venerable progenitor must 

154 



wonder a little that in spite of his fears A Matter of 
I have not in all these years yet 
learned enough to be good. 

All education may not tend toward 
conscientiousness, may not increase 
the impulse to do right, but all proper 
education aids us in the discovery of 
what is right. And just here, I think, 
the confusion arises in the minds of 
those who expect, and are disap- 
pointed, that a man's morality shall 
increase with his knowledge. That it 
does not is in no wise the fault of his 
knowledge. To say that his immoral- 
ity is the result of his information is 
about as logical as to say that his in- 
formation is the result of his im- 
morality. A navigator needs all the 
information he can get to steer his 
ship clear of the rocks in a dangerous 
channel, but all the information in the 
world will not keep his vessel from go- 
ing to pieces if he insists upon steer- 
ing it wrong in spite of his knowledge. 
Neither will the best intentions in the 
world compensate for ignorance of 
where the danger lies. 

155 



A Matter of It is one thing to know what is 

onscience ^gj^ an( j q U Jte another thing to want 
to do it. 

That large numbers of the most 
conscientious people muddle their 
own lives and the lives of others, cer- 
tainly ought to convince us that the 
moral sense cannot be left to itself; 
that it needs the most thorough en- 
lightenment and the most careful 
training. And yet scarcely a week 
passes that some presumably intelli- 
gent parent does not say to me or in 
my hearing: "Well, I try not to worry 
about the children's naughtiness — I 
have always tried to do right, and my 
wife (or my husband) is certainly 
good and I think the children will turn 
out all right." 

To know right from wrong is in- 
telligence; to want to know what is 
right that one may do it is conscien- 
tiousness; to do right is morality. 

We have a comfortable way of as- 
serting that it is easy enough to know 
what is right but we really do not find 
it so. In simple states of society such 

156 



as confront the pioneer, where indus- A Matter of 
try means but one thing and is re- 
quired of all who have bodily health, 
the individual encounters fewer per- 
plexities than wait upon him in more 
complex society. As the plot thickens 
and problems of distribution, intangi- 
ble industries, middle-men, counsel- 
ors, etc., increase, more intricate 
questions present themselves. Where 
large numbers of the population either 
honestly or dishonestly "make their 
living by their wits" there are count- 
less pitfalls for the unwise and the un- 
wary. We will all admit, I think, that 
more difficult questions of morals pre- 
sent themselves to the agent than to 
the blacksmith, and more delicate 
problems confront the attorney than 
the agent. Stupid conscientiousness 
is not sufficient for these men; a 
trained and sensitive conscience is de- 
manded. 

Business, with its perpetual ten- 
dency toward speculation involving 
others besides the speculator, and its 
unblushing desire to get something 

157 



A Matter of for nothing through the ignorance or 
conscience necess it v f others, forever trembles 
on the verge of gambling and theft, 
and those who would keep their hands 
clean must have clear heads and prin- 
ciples well-defined and ready for use. 
Even thus armed we are full of doubt. 
Ruskin may have had us in view when 
he said, "People of moderate means 
and average powers of mind would do 
far more real good by merely carrying 
out stern principles of justice and hon- 
esty in common matters of trade, than 
by the most ingenious schemes of ex- 
tended philanthropy or vociferous 
declarations of theological doctrine." 
But the tendency of education dur- 
ing these latter years has been away 
from such austerity; it has been a 
search for the green pastures and still 
waters of learning, a disposition to 
hide the drudgery behind floral dec- 
orations. Our children dance into 
the kindergarten and complete their 
higher education with a "hop." Now 
schools are always the outgrowth of 
homes. Teachers are hired by par- 

158 



ents, not vice versa, as much that is A Matter of 

• ,, j < ij • «■ , Conscience 

written and spoken would indicate. 
And therefore if much of the moral 
training both at home and at school 
consists of mild admonition "to be 
good, kind to everybody and generally 
sweet and lovely," without any ex- 
plicit instructions as to what is right, 
we must hold the home responsible for 
the moral invertebrate which results. 
Every teacher knows that a child who 
brings from home a knowledge of 
what honor is and a love of it, a knowl- 
edge of what dishonor means and a 
hatred of it, cannot be corrupted at 
school. But a child who does not 
bring this from home rarely acquires 
it in the stilted, conventional and 
crowded life of the schoolroom. If 
we will herd our young in fifties and 
sixties we must take the consequences. 
Time was when the church was 
something more than a skilful combi- 
nation of business corporation, lecture 
bureau and social organization; when 
religion laid no claim to ease and gay- 
ety and held its devotees to stern rules 

159 



A Matter of of conduct — not always beneficent, 
onscience p er j ia p S) DU ^ chastening. We smile 

now at the faith which doubted the 
morality of all pleasant things, but 
perhaps it had its advantages; cer- 
tainly we are tasting the bitter fruits 
today in many places of a religion 
which refuses to cope with unpleasant 
things and drapes the sharp angles of 
its creed behind tinseled generalities. 
The church and the vaudeville are not 
far apart today in their supreme and 
acknowledged effort to "make them- 
selves attractive to the young people." 
As a matter of fact doing right is 
not an easy, drifting, effortless thing. 
Natural depravity is not more unrea- 
sonable as an article of faith than nat- 
ural perfection, and in our rebellion 
against the asceticism of teachings 
which cast a doubt upon every natural 
inclination, we must not fall into the 
error of trusting nature implicitly. 
The member of a church whose creed 
is carefully concealed from the young 
as something in no way related to 
morals, who considers doctrinal ser- 

160 



mons obsolete, has no right to wonder A Matter of 
that laws are so calmly disregarded 
and sincerity in business so rare. The 
one thing that has made religions 
valuable has been sincerity. Looking 
back over their long list of confessed 
blunders, it certainly has not been 
their verity. And in exchanging the 
austere dignity of the sincere though 
puritanical clergy of half a century 
ago for the tactful "promoter" of the 
modern pulpit, the moral tone of 
orthodoxy has certainly not been 
strengthened. 

The reason of this defection is not 
far to seek. The advance of science 
and the dissemination of knowledge 
have weakened the hold of abstract 
theology on the pulpit. Fear no 
longer drives men into religion. The 
church must make a bid for the inter- 
est of the people. The growth of 
cities has created a demand for social 
centers, and the church availing itself 
of this, has become largely social. 
The commercial spirit which pervades 
all society has thus taken possession 

161 



A Matter of of religion, and while many good peo- 
ple work in its cause from the best and 
purest of motives, the work that they 
do is entirely remote from the uplift- 
ing of society, being simply the busi- 
ness enterprise of maintaining and ad- 
vancing the organization. The money 
necessary for this purpose is no longer 
obtained by grinding the faces of the 
poor but very often by patting the 
backs of the rich — which is certainly 
an advance in kindliness if not in 
morality. 

Indeed, looking society over today, 
we are constrained to admit that 
many of the sterner virtues have been 
sacrificed to kindliness and brotherly 
love. There has been a distinct gain 
these latter years in tenderness of 
heart and a perceptible loss in austere 
virtue. In our anxiety to become our 
brother's keeper we have perhaps neg- 
lected ourselves a little, and it may 
not be amiss to heed what Ruskin says 
and devote ourselves individually to 
carrying out "stern principles of jus- 
tice" and let the heathen rage. 

162 



Of course you will remind me that A Matter of 
morality is altogether and distinctly 
social; that if you or I wandered alone 
on the earth, we should need no 
morals, since nature would suffice. 
But the fact that we are chiefly con- 
cerned with our duty to our fellows, 
in no way decides for us what that 
duty is, yet certainly at its foundation 
lies a strict attention to the individual 
personally committed to our care, 
namely ourselves. What the social 
nature of morality does prove I think 
is its absolute lack of dependence upon 
any system of theology, dogma, de- 
monology or other form of abstract or 
speculative reasoning. It is our duty 
to man: a purely human proposition. 
If any nature finds aid in lashing itself 
to the discharge of this duty, or in dis- 
covering what it is, through any sys- 
tem of speculation concerning spirits 
or immortality or any peculiar theory 
of creation or any hypothesis concern- 
ing the unknowable, he has every right 
to make use of such aid. But my duty 
to my fellowman has no more to do 

163 



A Matter of with the number of years I am to live 
after I leave this earth than it has to 
do with the number of years I am to 
live on this earth. If I am to die next 
year the fact could not properly affect 
my political opinions, and if I am to 
live ten billion years I must pay my 
note at the bank when it is due, or at 
least give it "prompt attention." 

To attach to the problem of find- 
ing out and discharging our social 
obligations, which constitutes the 
whole of morality, a vast and unsolv- 
able mass of theory and belief is con- 
fusing in the extreme; and there is no 
question in my mind that the teach- 
ings of Christ, which are simple and 
easily understood, have been often 
neglected or discarded by reason of 
the mystery and miracle thereto at- 
tached. Already these same teachings 
are coming around to us by way of 
political science and meeting ready ac- 
ceptance under new conditions and 
unhampered by theology. 

To say to a child, "You must do 
right because it is the will of God," 

164 



arouses instant and unending discus- A Matter of 

TT j 1 ■■ • ,1 mi Conscience 

sion: How do you know it is the will 
of God? Is the message genuine? 
Have you interpreted it correctly? — 
and a thousand other questions ensue. 
Now, right is not right because it is 
the will of God, but it is the will of 
God because it is right. And we must 
confine ourselves to finding out what 
is best for our fellowmen by the 
strait and narrow path of human 
judgment and not by the devious ways 
of theology, knowing that when we 
have found it it will be something far 
removed from miraculous, some ev- 
ery-day matter of honesty and square- 
dealing and self-sacrifice, and that in 
doing it, that day and every day, we 
shall discharge our whole duty to 
God. 

If any of us find aid in listening to 
an organ, or counting beads, or wear- 
ing a uniform, or in the smoke of aro- 
matic gums, or in hearing a certain 
man speak every week from a plat- 
form, or in reading a particular book, 
or in partaking of bread and wine, or 

165 



A Matter of being immersed in water, or in any 
onscience f orm Q £ svm bolism whatever, — let us 
lay hold of these things and avail our- 
selves of their help. But let us not be 
guilty of saying that the man who 
does not need their aid is a sinner; let 
us not confuse the moral sense of the 
young by touching with mystery that 
which we should make plain, lest when 
the foundation gives way, when his in- 
tellect rebels against miracle and mys- 
ticism, such character as we have tried 
to build upon it give way also. 

It is not a difficult thing to show a 
child that the security and happiness 
of his little world is endangered by 
telling lies, that absolute confidence in 
his spoken word makes life easier for 
all about him and preserves his own 
honor and peace. Indeed, it is far 
easier to give a child a reasonable rea- 
son for moral acts than to give him a 
reason for the faith that is in us, and 
explain to him the relation of faith 
and works. The parent who begins 
his crusade against untruthfulness by 
saying, "God doesn't love little boys 

166 



and girls who tell stories," is a mental A Matter of 

1 • 1 j j x. u 1 j Conscience 

shirk and deserves to be asked, 
"Why?" as he probably will be. Next 
week you will hear him tell the same 
child that "God loves everybody," 
that "He so loved the world," etc. 
Small wonder that few of us are clear 
as to what is right, escaping as we 
have from such teaching with a child- 
ish idea that morals are in some inex- 
plicable way mixed up with Jonah and 
the fact of angels having feathered 
wings. 

Morality is largely a question of 
ways and means rather than of emo- 
tion, and the fact that it has been so 
hampered by unreality on its practical 
side, from the disposition to deify the 
reformer and invest him with super- 
natural power and authority, and so 
exalted on the emotional side by the 
consequent cultivation of faith and 
feeling rather than judgment and rea- 
son, may account to some extent for 
the fact mentioned heretofore: that 
kindliness and brotherly love of a 
somewhat gelatinous sort seem to 

167 



A Matter of have increased among us to the detri- 
ment of justice, honesty, candor and 
other sterner virtues. 

Love is a very pretty but very elu- 
sive motive, and yet we hear a great 
deal of it as an ethical force. Very 
few parents seem to have any definite 
plan for the moral instruction of their 
children beyond a weekly lesson leaf 
which may treat of the architecture of 
the Tabernacle or the climate of Syria, 
or if perchance it forbids stealing fails 
to tell some prevalent form of that 
vice masquerading under more agree- 
able names. Being unable to settle 
the question of immortality, a good 
many parents feel justified in shirking 
plain questions of every-day honesty. 

Every teacher will give you tes- 
timony as to the appalling lack of 
moral instruction — not general ad- 
monition, not failure to inculcate ami- 
ability and generosity — but lack of 
parental instruction on the simplest 
questions of practical morals among 
children old enough to understand 
and appreciate the reasons why one 

168 



line of conduct is right and another A Matter of 

Conscience 

wrong. 

I well remember an early experi- 
ence in the schoolroom which opened 
my eyes to this state of affairs. I was 
confronted by what every teacher has 
met: an excuse written for one boy 
by another. My pupils were in their 
teens and the children of average 
homes, and yet I found them alarm- 
ingly ignorant and indifferent as to 
the sacredness of a signature. They 
knew of forgery, yes; it was wrong, 
because you got money, generally a 
large sum, which seemed to make it 
worse in their eyes. But it was evi- 
dent that very few of them had ever 
received the slightest reasonable ex- 
planation of why it was wrong to use 
another's signature or had been im- 
pressed in any lasting way with the 
sacredness of a name, except as it 
stood for financial gain; in other 
words, as they had read of it in the 
newspapers. 

Children, if they have any sense at 
all, have usually a very plain unvar- 

169 



A Matter of nished kind of common sense. We 
onscience w ^ o are Q ^ eT mav indulge in imagin- 
ative flights and emotional orgies and 
deceive ourselves and each other with 
half truths; but to them in their help- 
lessness we owe the best we have ac- 
quired, and we owe it to them unadul- 
terated with speculation and uncol- 
ored with fancy. What right has a 
grown man or woman to look into a 
little child's clear eyes when asked a 
question he cannot answer and tangle 
the struggling intelligence in the web 
of his ignorance ? If you do not know, 
why not tell him so? If you doubt, 
why not tell him that? And if you 
only believe and do not know why, 
why not tell him that also? He may 
not be able to digest the truth, but at 
least you will not have poisoned him 
with a lie. 

Morals would be easier to teach if 
parents were not concerned to recon- 
cile them with their religion, or more 
properly, their theology. And while 
society needs all the brotherly love it 
can acquire, it needs along with it 

170 



something which will keep that same A Matter of 
brotherly love working quietly in nscience 
harness. 

The conscience of the human being 
may be systematically trained, and 
trained to nice distinctions of good 
and evil, but it cannot be done through 
the emotions nor by faith in the super- 
natural. It will mean a patient study 
of the needs of man and a careful disci- 
pline of self in supplying those needs; 
a just and impartial estimate of the 
individual rather than a wide, envelop- 
ing love of all men (who are certainly 
not equally lovable). And it must be 
done chiefly by parents, but not by 
parents who have hazy ideas of right 
and wrong themselves, and who desire 
their children above all things to "get 
on in the world," as the world under- 
stands "getting on." 

Decay in the austere virtues of in- 
dustry, economy, justice and honesty 
has increased the demand for philan- 
thropy, and human nature's ready re- 
sponse to this demand demonstrates 
the change, rather than the loss, of 

171 



A Matter of moral impulse. But in turn the 
growth of philanthropy lessens the 
necessity for individual responsibility 
and requires careful adjustment, and 
great intelligence must be brought to 
its exercise. 

But having studied the needs of 
humanity as wisely and thoroughly as 
may be, and instructed our children 
and youth concerning them, we all 
recognize the necessity for will in ap- 
plying this knowledge to actual life. 
Without heeding the doleful and irre- 
sponsible wails of the thoughtless con- 
cerning the downward tendency of 
man, we may safely lend an ear to 
the thoughtful and intelligent critic. 
Brunetiere says, in speaking of needed 
reforms in the moral attitude of 
art: 

Will would be needed, and unhappily we 
live in a time when — to give meaning to an 
old distinction that might be thought very 
subtle and very vain, and which profound 
philosophers have denied — the failure, or, 
rather, the enfeeblement of the will has per- 
haps no equal except in the increasing inten- 
sity of the desires. 

172 



Those of us who see a measure of A Matter of 
truth in the French critic's statement Conscience 
may ask ourselves whether this state 
of affairs is not the result of man's 
over-gregariousness, his being a some- 
what too "social animal"? Are we 
not disposed to advocate our reforms 
before we practice them, and feel ag- 
grieved that the "procession" does not 
fall in with us ? Do we not weakly de- 
fend our weaknesses by saying "but 
everybody does so nowadays," even 
though we know no reform was ever 
inaugurated by doing as everybody 
does ? Do we not, in short, all lack the 
strength of will to be peculiar? I may 
be overstating it, but I venture to say 
that nine-tenths of us are at bottom 
dissatisfied with the plan of our daily 
lives in matters entirely within our 
control. And what do we do about it ? 
Calmly set about conforming to our 
own ideas? Oh, no. We fret and 
fume because society does not agree 
with us and thus enable us to do the 
popular thing; we tell everybody 
what we think and demonstrate on 

173 



A Matter of every occasion (in words) how su- 

Conscience * • • 

penor our own system is; sometimes 
we hold conventions and pass reso- 
lutions and, having rent the air and 
"held long argument," we become 
hopeless and pessimistic and say there 
is no doing anything at all with people 
— better fall in with the current — 
and, having said this, we ignomini- 
ously melt into the average. 

Now in all probability it was never 
given to you or to me to do anything 
with society or the world at large, be- 
yond the influence which a rigid ad- 
herence to the principles which we 
have wrought out for ourselves would 
accomplish, and those of us who are 
thinking unpleasant things of the pro- 
cession because it does not follow our 
route should reflect that the street we 
prefer is thus left free and open for us 
to proceed in, and that possibly, just 
possibly, a few tried friends may join 
us and we may thus form the nucleus 
of a pageant, the tramp of whose 
march shall fill the world with noble 
delight. 

174 



Whether we mourn the fact or not, A Matter of 



I think we must all acknowledge that 
fear as a motive for conduct has dis- 
appeared or is disappearing- from so- 
ciety. With its going much that was 
cruel and austere has gone and much 
that is genial and human, warm and 
solacing has come. The joy of life has 
increased. But while we perhaps all 
felicitate ourselves upon this we must 
remember that fear has sometimes a 
tonic effect upon the will. The man 
who believes that by certain tempo- 
rary afflictions which endure but for a 
day, he may save or help to save his 
children from the pains of hell forever, 
will show Spartan firmness in admin- 
istering those temporary afflictions or 
deprivations. But his harsh belief is 
not the only motive from which firm- 
ness of will may emanate; the fact 
that we involuntarily say "Spartan 
firmness" is sufficient proof of this. 
But when society is changing from 
one set of motives to another, there is 
likely to be a relaxing of one before a 
firm hold is established elsewhere. 

175 



Conscience 



Conscience 



AMatterof We are tasting today the increased 
pleasure of life and a broadening love 
of man. The danger before us lies in 
the tendency to think all things must 
be pleasant or we will have none of 
them, to glorify emotion above reason, 
the esthetic above the just. 

Most of us were nourished morally 
on the traditions of the theological re- 
gime. If we have ceased to believe in 
these, we must not expect to cultivate 
morals either by sham or neglect but 
by applying the truth, as it now pre- 
sents itself to us, to life with the same 
vigor that has always characterized 
the application of error. 

To say, "If puritanical belief culti- 
vated firmness of will, why not return 
to puritanism?" is cowardice and 
folly. The march of human belief can- 
not be controlled; men do not believe 
what they will but what they must; 
and whether we rejoice or lament we 
cannot alter the fact that the human 
will is no longer greatly influenced by 
the fear of God. 

It remains for us to set about 

176 



strengthening it through the love of A Matter of 

YY->ar\ Conscience 



177 



WHY PITY THE POOR? 

The world has fallen into a danger- 
ous way of calling the wholesome in- 
dustry of life by hard names, and there 
is a prevailing readiness to find excuse 
for personal shortcomings in the 
"drudgery," the "grind," the "strug- 
gle" of everyday work and wages. We 
are all prone to regard "the environ- 
ment" as something which hems us in, 
instead of what it really is — the trel- 
lis upon which character may grow; 
the scaffolding upon which one may 
climb to serener heights; the trapeze 
upon which we may take such exercise 
as will keep our moral muscles from 
flabbiness. 

It is no doubt soothing to self-love 
to think that we would all fly if we 
were not caged, but the melancholy 
fact remains that if most of us grovel 
it is because we are grovelling. 

We all recognize the value of self- 

178 



denial and hardship and untoward Why Pity 
conditions — for ancestral purposes. * e oor 
As a people we are rather fond of 
pointing backward to the endurance 
of our forefathers, with one hand, 
while we pat ourselves on the chest 
with the other and say: "See what 
a fine, sturdy, and altogether credit- 
able sort of person I am, by rea- 
son of a long line of hardy pioneer 
ancestry!" 

Strangely enough, one of our fa- 
vorite nineteenth century ways of 
proving our worth is to go about try- 
ing to divest other people of every 
remnant of self-respect acquired or in- 
herited. Our New England origina- 
tors fought a stubborn soil, a bitter 
climate, famine, sickness, Indians, and 
religious persecution, and out of the 
turmoil and hardship, and conscien- 
tious narrowness of it all they gave 
their children a heritage of strength, 
frugality and endurance. They had 
much to combat ; but one enemy they 
were spared. They were not called to 
fight organized philanthropy. It is 

179 



the Poor 



WhyPity not recorded that any "fund" was 
started to assist the parents of Benja- 
min Franklin as they reared their fam- 
ily of thirteen children in honest pov- 
erty. One shudders a little, following 
down the years, to think what we 
might have lost if Abraham Lincoln 
had been discovered by the "Society 
for the Assistance of Indigent and De- 
serving Young Men"! Imagine, if 
you can without apoplexy, a commit- 
tee reporting upon your pioneer 
grandparents, or mine, as "a case of 
destitution" — a fate their hardships 
would certainly insure them in our 
day. 

Why pity the poor, anyway? The 
only sting that honest poverty knows 
is pity. If no one felt sorry for you 
because your coat is patched, would 
the patch prove a discomfort? Wealth 
may be a means of happiness, but he 
who attains happiness without it flies 
over a mountain instead of climbing 
it. Pity the poor in spirit, the narrow- 
souled, the friendless; pity the afflict- 
ed, the bereft, the disappointed, and 

180 



when you have done with these, if you Why Pity 
have any pity left, expend it on those 
who have only wealth to make them 
happy. 

There is an urgent demand in the 
world for happiness. Not ecstasy, 
nor delirium, nor excitement, but sim- 
ple happiness. If the poor are to be 
made miserable because they are poor 
and the rich are not allowed to be 
happy because they are rich, upon 
whom are we to depend to keep up our 
spirits? Heretofore the "fellow of in- 
finite jest" has generally been, like 
Yorick, poor. The millionaire at his 
desk has not enlivened us by his wit 
as often as has the porter on the pave- 
ment. It is the impecunious onlooker 
who finds amusement in the solemn 
parade of the rich taking themselves 
seriously in Central Park. If, as some 
say, the American is coming to be 
known abroad by the sadness of his 
smile, may it not be because only rich 
Americans go abroad? 

Certainly we are not a melancholy 
people at home. True we are not hi- 

181 



the Poor 



WhyPity larious ; but humor and hilarity rarely 
go hand in hand. A keen sense of hu- 
mor prompts the possessor to take 
things quietly. No man has a greater 
fear of "making himself ridiculous" 
than the American, simply because no 
one knows man's capacity for being 
ridiculous better than he. If we have 
any national characteristic aside from 
the disposition to think we have many, 
it is the fear of being laughed at — a 
fear which has its origin in a readiness 
to laugh and a knowledge of what is 
laughable. Even our artists play 
about the edges of great passions into 
which the Slav and the Gaul fling 
themselves, because, being Americans, 
they are ever mindful of the fact that 
human passion, like all ephemeral 
things, perpetually trembles on the 
verge of the ludicrous. 

If, then, the rich American abroad 
has a sad smile, it is either because he 
is abroad or because he is rich, for 
however deeply care and worry may 
etch their lines on the face of the 
American business man, the American 

182 



the Poor 



worker, if he be blessed with poverty Why Pity 
enough to keep him at work eight 
hours a day, and wealth enough to 
keep him from worry the remain- 
ing sixteen, is a light-hearted and 
jocular sort of person. His wit and 
humor flash and bubble on street- 
cars, in shops, and on railway plat- 
forms, and his optimistic good nature 
makes it well nigh impossible to 
crowd or jostle or jam him into ill- 
temper. 

As for his sister, the woman who 
works for money, and seems in con- 
sequence to have monopolized the 
name of "working woman," perhaps 
she is a trifle sad-eyed and dispirited. 
It may be that long years of prejudice 
have taught her to look upon idleness 
as her birthright; that the prehistoric 
man who offered support in exchange 
for maternity, failed to have his con- 
tract in writing. Or it may be that 
she does not go to work until losses 
and disappointments drive her to it. 
Or, perchance, the oft-repeated and 
much-denied assertion of her lack of 

183 



Why Pity 
the Poor 



humor is correct. No one knows but 
herself, and she does not know that 
she knows. 



184 



EARNING HER BREAD — AND 
JAM 

Grave fears are rife among us that 
the American Young Man may be 
driven to the wall industrially by 
the ubiquitous and ever-encroaching 
Young Woman. To his honor be it 
said that the Young Man, himself, 
does not seem to share the alarm of 
his elders, but keeps on his narrowing 
way to affluence or poverty with a 
cheerful optimism which may be the 
result of youth, of sex, or of both. 
Possibly he and the Young Woman 
are secretly much amused by the dole- 
ful middle-aged clamor which is going 
on about them as to the probable ex- 
tinction of marriage, and there is little 
doubt that many of their elders find 
inward comfort in the reflection that 
nothing is expected of them in the 
premises but advice. 

There is always a comfortable ir- 

185 



Earning responsibility in discussing industrial 
e andjam an d scientific problems, since social 
forces and those of nature are gen- 
erally beyond our control and will 
move on according to their own laws. 
Not all the talk of a century concern- 
ing the effect on labor of the invention 
of machinery has resulted in one ma- 
chine the less, and it is not likely that 
any amount of public clamor will in- 
duce the Young Woman to vacate her 
desk or resign her ledger so long as it 
suits her employer and herself for her 
to retain them. She is not generally 
in her place from any higher moral im- 
pulse than that which actuates the 
Young Man in his; necessity, or na- 
tive energy which, in the agricultural 
epoch of her great grandmother, 
found an outlet in spinning, weaving 
and butter making, and which refuses 
to be shut up in six rooms with an 
able-bodied mother and two or three 
full-grown sisters, is her abundant 
justification. When men were build- 
ing cotton and woolen mills and 
creameries they did not stop to ask 

186 



whether they were taking away her Earning 

,• j •■, • - , -t Her Bread- 

OCCUpatlOnS, and it is not to be ex- an djam 

pected that she should trouble herself 
greatly about theirs. She has gener- 
ally found men quite able to take care 
of themselves. 

But the wise and worried tell us 
that this heartless unconcern on the 
Young Woman's part, will lead to her 
own discomfiture; that if she obstin- 
ately continues to earn her own bread 
and butter, or, as they sometimes 
justly charge, to take her bread and 
butter from her parents and earn her 
own jam, she will make it impossible 
for men to marry and support a fam- 
ily. The situation is certainly unique. 
Assuredly, if the Young Woman con- 
tinues to take care of herself, she will 
make it difficult for any to take care 
of her, and it is quite possible that 
marriage may be driven to finding 
some excuse for itself other than sup- 
port. 

On the other hand, if women de- 
velop a taste and ability for earning 
money, it will not be necessary for 

187 



Earning men to earn so much, and the specta- 
Yndjam c ^ e °f the overworked brother whose 
pride obliges him to forego matri- 
mony that he may support, not only a 
widowed mother but two or three idle 
sisters, may become a thing of the 
past. As for the much-maligned 
young woman who boards at home 
and works for low wages wherewith 
to buy finery, she is no more reprehen- 
sible, perhaps, than the young man 
who lives at home and works for such 
wage, low or high, as he can get, that 
he may spend it on carriage hire, flow- 
ers and bon-bons for idle young 
women. Far better let the flimsy- 
souled girl whose heart is set upon 
finery, earn it honestly and wear it 
with her silly head held high in girlish 
innocence, than to tax the public for 
reformatories. What if she does pre- 
vent some man from marrying and 
rearing a family of girls to repeat the 
colorless inanity of her own life? It 
may be well for us to care for the chil- 
dren that are born before we shed 
maudlin tears over the unborn. 

188 



The world cannot go on changing Earning 
for the man and remain stationary for an e J j a r ^ " 
the woman. Desire it as he may, the 
Young Man cannot resume the occu- 
pations of his grandfather. An age of 
vast enterprises, of powerful combina- 
tions, of gigantic trusts, is an age of 
increasing salaried workers — an age 
of clerks. Men and women by their 
wants, their ambitions, their tireless 
activities, have made these changes; 
the changes have not made them. 
Manhood and womanhood, love and 
marriage are not likely to perish until 
something better is evolved. That 
something better will pretty certainly 
be something outwardly different, but 
it will be inwardly the same. Charac- 
ter manifests itself through circum- 
stances, but he who confounds the 
two makes a grave blunder. If your 
daughter lacks any of her grand- 
mother's virtues, it is not because 
she has forgotten how to curtsy 
and learned to ride a bicycle, but be- 
cause you have failed to transmit to, 
and develop in her, the grace of soul 

189 



Earning which dominated her grandmother's 

Her Bread- i-r 



and Jam 



If the Young Man's one hundred 
dollars a month has become fifty by 
reason of the Young Woman's com- 
petition, there is little probability that 
the other fifty is being spent by her 
entirely upon herself. Oftener than 
otherwise it is supporting a modest 
household and he. and she, if they be 
so minded, can live upon his earn- 
ings when that modest household no 
longer demands her aid. If their af- 
fection will not stand the strain of 
self-sacrifice, one or the other must be 
unworthy, and it is no great loss to 
society if the unworthy remain un- 
wed. 

The young woman who expects to 
step out of her father's house, which 
represents years of industry and accu- 
mulation, into another equally luxuri- 
ous, must be prepared to leave off 
where her parents began, since in- 
herited wealth is of short tenure 
among us. 

The gently-bred girl has heard this 

190 



until, we suspect, she is growing a Earning 
trifle tired of it. If she could speak for an e ji j a *JJf ~ 
herself, which propriety forbids, she 
would, no doubt, astonish us by her 
unpractical view. In spite of all the 
worldliness which has been attributed 
to her, she rarely looks at marriage 
from the industrial side. With a con- 
scious capacity for self-sacrifice, she 
dimly wonders why there are no men 
who inspire it. The fact that a man 
will "get on," which seems to mean so 
much to her elders, does not make him 
worthy in her eyes. Education, good 
breeding, gentle manners are large 
factors in daily life. If our young 
men are content to be mere money- 
getters, they must expect to be tried 
by their own standard. When there 
are men who will make poverty worth 
while there will be women to brave it 
with them. 

The mercenary young woman is 
not often found among the very rich 
or the very poor. Her habitat seems 
to be that fringe of society where un- 
gratified vanity and crude social am- 

191 



Earning bition have resolved life into a strug- 
e andjam §"^ e f° r display. Much turning and 
dyeing and bedizening of old finery be- 
gets mental tawdriness, and the girl 
who will not escape from it by honest 
work, looks to marriage for her re- 
lease. Is it not possible that she 
would do less harm in the labor 
market than in domestic life? 



192 



THE VIRTUE OF HATRED 

Why a knowledge of good should 
be called innocence, and a knowledge 
of evil experience, is hard to explain. 
Wise men blush at the charge of ig- 
norance brought by those learned in 
iniquity, forgetting all the good of 
which their accusers have no ken. 
Vice turned virtue is generally brag- 
gart and dictatorial, essaying to guide 
the steps of those who have avoided 
pitfalls. Character is the only gar- 
ment of which the wearer boasts that 
it has been often to the cleaner. Men 
flock to hear a blatant "evangelist" 
vaunt himself on his struggle from the 
mire and all around are men whose 
better wisdom has kept them clean. 
"But the good men were not tempt- 
ed," you say? Then go to them in 
crowds and learn why. They have 
something to tell worth while. 

The society that commits its virtue 

193 



The Virtue to the keeping of the physically weak, 
will always defend evil by calling good 
effeminate. Have we any right to 
wonder when callow intellects deduce 
the virility of vice? Society is suffer- 
ing for a little fearless honesty. Legis- 
lation might rest from the suppression 
of evil if only those who hate it dared 
to show their hate. What save cow- 
ardice gives us the laughable spectacle 
of good men separating themselves 
from iniquity by a public ordinance 
and walking arm in arm with the of- 
fender ? Loving the sinner and hating 
the sin? My good friend, the sin is 
the sinner. 

Most picturesque of all our would- 
be virtues, and therefore dearest to the 
sentimentalist, is forgiveness. And 
what is it? A chimera. Your friend 
plays you false; what is he to you ever 
afterward but a traitor? You have 
forgiven him — you love him still? 
Have a care how you love falsity. But 
he is sorry — he repents? Love him 
then with a reservation, for part of 
him is not your friend. Not all the 

194 



power of the universe can get a man The Virtue 
back where he was before he did his 
neighbor wrong. Every step taken in 
returning to the right path might have 
carried him forward in it. All the 
moral energy exerted in overcoming 
unrighteousness might have made for 
righteousness. We may blot out our 
share in his punishment, but his sin 
cannot be blotted out. Strange that 
man retains a moral sense in spite of 
all his efforts to strangle it with 
dogma ! 

It is humility rather than pride 
that keeps the clear-sighted from per- 
petually suing for pardon. The futility 
of the plea oppresses him. Wrong 
cannot be righted, it may only be 
avoided, and that is a matter of future 
conduct not of present words. It is 
better that sorrow for one's misdeeds 
should lie too deep for words, than too 
shallow for actions. The man of shuf- 
fling morals is easily brought to his 
knees. The valiant soul confesses to 
itself, does penance until death, and 
looks for no absolution. God and man 

195 



The Virtue may forget my offense, but when I 
o atre f or g et j t fa e numbness of spiritual 
death has set in. He who asks that 
his sins be washed away begs for 
moral blindness. Far better ask that 
the memory of his good deeds be blot- 
ted out. Character would suffer less 
from the loss. Remorse is tonic, for- 
giveness is anaesthetic. The truly re- 
pentant cannot forgive himself; why 
should he ask another to do what he 
finds impossible? Why claim a mira- 
cle at the hands of his maker? That 
he does, is but another evidence of the 
colossal conceit of mortality. 

There is no charity so popular as 
that which covers a multitude of sins 
and keeps them warm and comfort- 
able. Tenderness to evil is very often 
an indirect cruelty to good. Forgive- 
ness too easily shades off into conni- 
vance. The world may be so busy re- 
forming the wrongdoer, that it finds 
no time to encourage the rightdoer; 
yet there may be more genuine philan- 
thropy in smiling upon the good 
man than in weeping over the sot. A 

196 



little undisguised scorn is valuable at The Virtue 
times. ofHatred 

The youth looking about for a 
career which will bring him most 
readily into social prominence today, 
might logically fix upon crime. The 
criminal is on every tongue and on 
every page. Government, education, 
conditions are held responsible and 
vigorously attacked. The individual 
is treated gently as an irresponsi- 
ble effect. And yet man is, and al- 
ways has been, the great first cause of 
evil. 

Society rallies eagerly at the call 
of an abstraction. It is so much easier 
to build "rescue" homes than to close 
our own to well dressed vice. "Judge 
not," we say virtuously when we are 
too cowardly to follow our judgment. 
In all our analysis of evil, in all our 
wordy efforts at its suppression, are 
we forgetting the vital remedy — to 
hate it? 



197 



RIGHTS AND THE RIGHT 

The man who is perpetually looking 
after his rights is very likely to be 
neglectful of his duties. What many 
are pleased to call a strong sense of 
justice is often only a strong sense of 
injustice. They do not love the right 
so much as they hate the wrong, and 
they do not hate the wrong so much 
as they hate to be wronged. Those of 
us who make our indignation under 
personal injustice the measure of 
our principle, should note carefully 
whether we feel the same wrath when 
our neighbor is the victim. If we are 
really at war with evil, our own hurts 
will not count for much. The man 
who is fighting fire does not stop to 
nurse his burns. 

We should never collect our spiri- 
tual dues to the uttermost farthing. 
To have life in our debt gives us the 
whip-hand of fate. The penalty of 

198 



being square with the world is that we Rights and 
have nothing "coming to us." The in- t eRlght 
dividual is poor indeed to whom the 
world owes only a living. Two things 
we should all learn — to be imposed 
upon by our inferiors and to be helped 
by our superiors. Only by this do we 
discover our social status — our in- 
feriors are those who can impose upon 
us, our superiors those who can help 
us. The American has been derided 
for his silence under small injustice — 
for being abashed by the hotel clerk, 
the conductor, the ticket-agent. It 
may be his spiritual coat-of-arms. 
There is nothing of which the great 
soul is more afraid than of smallness. 
The highest courage bears its own 
wrongs that it may redress those of 
others. 

When men care very much about 
the thing involved, they say, "I care 
only for the principle of the thing." 
As if there were anything else worth 
caring about. Conscience has become 
so tangled with self-love that many 
good people mistake the one for the 

199 



Rights and 
the Right 



other. It is not my conscience that 
hurts me when my neighbor keeps his 
Sabbath by breaking mine; it is my 
egotism. If he had proper respect for 
my opinion he would worship my God. 
His failure to do so pains me, but it is 
a headache not a heartache. A city 
ordinance will cure it. 

It has been the fashion ever since 
Jeremiah to regard one's own age and 
people as morally decadent. "In these 
days" is our usual preface for sins as 
old as humanity. Perhaps we owe our 
zeal in "redeeming the time" to our 
belief that "the days are evil." Vice 
has taken on new forms with us but it 
has deserted some of its old ones. At 
bottom each age thinks its own sins 
an improvement on those that went 
before. They are more to its taste. 
For the purpose of oratory the capital 
that fetters and the competition that 
fells the weak are worse than slavery 
and bloodshed, but a taste of serfdom 
or savage warfare would silence the 
orator. The corpses of a few brave 
men are mutilated by their victors and 

200 



the modern world turns white to the Rights and 
lips. Compared with the future our * e lg 4 
age is perhaps "no better than it 
should be," but compared with the 
past it shows hopeful tendencies. 

It is not well for individuals or na- 
tions to dwell too much upon their 
vices or their virtues. No doubt the 
latter are too few and the former too 
many, but the public as well as the 
private conscience has morbid possi- 
bilities. Whatever is wrong in our 
day and generation, you and I are at 
the bottom of it. One seventy-mil- 
lionth of the responsibility rests with 
each of us. This fact ought to fill us 
with hope. 

Social analysts tell us that we have 
more intense desires and feebler wills 
than our forefathers — tenderer hearts 
and tougher consciences ; higher ideals 
and lower expectations. Certainly one 
might be born into a worse time than 
that of eager desire, kindliness and 
high ideals, and it may be that, tested 
by these positive virtues only, do will, 
conscience and hope appear weaker. 

201 



Rights and 
the Right 



During the last fifty years the 
world has been rapidly shedding its 
theology. During the next fifty it will 
formulate its religion. Heretofore the 
two have been inextricably confused. 
Our ideas of right have not materially 
changed, but many have forsaken the 
old reasons why. The command of 
God, the hope of heaven, the fear of 
hell, have lost their potency, and he 
who loved neither God nor man so 
much as he feared the flames, is re- 
leased on his own recognizance. We 
have his honest immorality in ex- 
change for his dishonest morality, and 
the former will doubtless harm us as 
little as the latter helped us. When 
we teach our children the right as 
zealously as our fathers taught the 
catechism, we shall hear less com- 
plaint of wavering consciences. That 
we have ceased to be afraid to die is 
no proof that our children know by in- 
stinct how to live. The moral sense of 
a child needs instruction, but it will 
not grow strong on the bones of a 
creed from which you and I have 



202 



picked all the meat. The best results ^ ig !^. s ^ nd 
of our lifelong thought and experience 
are none too good for its use. Above 
all things we must lend it the courage 
of hope. 

The progress of society is not 
measured by its unhappiness or by its 
content, but by its happy discontent, 
and the man or woman who cannot 
go about his reforms with a glad heart 
should look to his own reformation 
first. The energy of despair is not a 
reliable factor in evolution. Works 
without faith are dead. 

More and more the world is com- 
ing to realize the duty of happiness. 
Not the duty of pursuing happiness 
but of being happy — not joy at the 
end, but joy by the way. We should 
take our heaven piecemeal, with no 
thought for the morrow of death. He 
who can conquer this life need have 
no fear of another, but he who allows 
his soul to be daunted by losses, or 
failure, or the pain of living must 
stand forever on the threshold of hell. 



203 



"HIGH NOTIONS" 

A little learning is preferable to a 
great deal of ignorance. Knowledge, 
much or little, never hurt any human 
being. He who seems to suffer from 
it, suffers only from ignorance of his 
limitations. It is not in what he 
knows that danger lies for the man of 
small knowing; it is in what he does 
not know. It is not the little learning 
but the large estimate of it that is the 
dangerous thing. 

When we have got our highly spe- 
cialized American, densely ignorant of 
all things but his own dependent craft, 
we may find him a clamorous and tur- 
bulent citizen; we may wish we had 
not exchanged for him the facile prod- 
uct of a no doubt faulty system, who 
aimed too high perhaps, but caught at 
something as he fell and hung on 
hopefully. What if he did try to be a 
lawyer when God meant him for a 

204 



blacksmith? The mistake was be- "High 
tween him and his Maker, and he did Notions " 
not hold the State responsible. 

It is out of the ambitions, the at- 
tempts and the failures, that we get 
our really great; and when we sneer 
at the aspirations of the crude and un- 
taught, we should remember that it is 
only when they fail that they are folly. 
When they succeed they are biog- 
raphy. 

If our youth come home from 
school with "high notions," it is by 
no means certain that they learned 
them there. When "high notions" 
disappear from among us the republic 
will be dead and buried. 

By no twisting or turning will the 
letters of democracy spell content. 
When crowns cease to be hereditary, 
crosses cease to be so as well. If a 
man may not rule because his father 
was a king, another need not mend 
shoes because his father was a cobbler. 
Eternal hope is eternal unrest. 

Let your High School boy and girl 
try what they will, and fail if need be; 

205 



Notions 



"High they will come out of it happier and 
saner and less of a menace to society 
than those whose ambitions smoulder 
under a dead weight of ignorance. 
Education is the safety-valve of am- 
bition. 

When we have no boys and girls 
with ambitions too lofty for their cir- 
cumstances we shall have no men and 
women of attainments lofty enough 
for our needs. 

When parents learn to believe, 
teachers will learn to teach, that educa- 
tion is a means of happiness, not of 
gain. When we at home have taught 
our boys and girls that money is a 
means of education, not education a 
means of making money, we shall be 
ready to bring a charge against our 
schools because our children come 
from them with undue reverence for 
appearances. 

No one knows just what the work 
of the future is to be, but all of us 
know the kind of men and women who 
will do it well. Active, alert, in- 
dustrious, courageous, conscientious, 

206 



hoping for the best and ready for "High 
the worst — these are the men and 
women our schools and homes should 
be making. Whether they do it by 
means of the classics or the forge, 
through the brain or the hand, mat- 
ters little; but that they do it matters 
much. 



207 



JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS 

Now that Christmas is over and 
each one of us has sent his conscience 
out as a committee of one to draft 
resolutions for the New Year, it is an 
excellent thing for the mental man, 
and an imperative necessity for the 
physical woman, to sit down and rest 
a bit beside the dying Yule-fire. And 
while one is resting, there can be no 
great harm in thinking a little — at 
least until conscience brings in its re- 
port and lashes one away from such 
unprofitable employment. 

"One man among a thousand have 
I found ; but a woman among all those 
have I not found" who is entirely 
satisfied with her Christmas giving. 
What she honestly intended to be a 
spontaneous expression of regard, 
came to be a matter of book-keeping. 
She "remembered her friends" by 
writing their names in lists and check- 

208 



ing them off; and in her anxiety not to Just After 
forget those whom she loved well Christmas 
enough to fear they would "expect 
something," she neglected many of 
those who loved her too well to ex- 
pect anything. Sitting in the twilight 
she is constrained to take some of the 
ashes of the Yule-log and sprinkle 
them upon her head as she remembers 
how often in the whirl and hurry and 
anxiety of holiday generosity she has 
forgotten that "peace on earth" is 
quite as important as "good will to 
men." 

At the end of this festival season 
many of us feel as if we, like our coun- 
try, have just emerged from a war of 
benevolence, and although unlike her, 
we have shed no blood in our efforts to 
prove the kindness of our hearts, it is 
not unlikely that in our nervous anxi- 
ety to promote happiness we have 
made those nearest and dearest to us 
feel our good deeds very keenly at 
times. No doubt the near and dear 
ones are willing to be sacrificed for 
our better aspirations, else they were 

209 



just After not so dear even though near; and the 
lnstmas aS pj ra ti ns are good, no matter how 
imperfectly we may work them out. 

Most of our generosity originates 
in good thinking and feeling, even 
when it ends in injustice; and good 
thoughts and feelings, which are as- 
suredly very prevalent in our day, are 
not to be underestimated as factors in 
social progress since they furnish the 
power that moves the world. There 
is vast room for improvement in the 
machinery, but very elaborate machin- 
ery may stand idle for lack of power — 
a lack which no observant thinker can 
complain of just now. When we have 
learned to turn our good will to men 
to account in promoting peace on 
earth the social problem will be solved. 
The happiness of mankind has shifted 
from a question of intent to one of 
ways and means. Unselfishness is in 
the air. If we have not good motives 
for our acts, individual or national, we 
are constrained to feign them. If we 
adopt a child from the street it must 
be to save it from evil, not to gratify 

210 



our vanity and support us in our old Just After 
age; if we "acquire" the Philippines Christmas 
it must be for their mental and moral 
advancement, not for our temporal 
gain. There is, therefore, a lesson to 
be learned from hypocrisy, since men 
do not generally pretend until society 
has made known its exactions. And 
it is a good thing, however bad it may 
seem to us at times, that everything, 
even to the anomaly of war, must find 
its excuse in altruism today. 

There may be a ray of comfort in 
all this for those of us who have be- 
taken ourselves to the ashes of the 
Yule-log to repent of our Christmas 
shortcomings. Perchance the good 
intent of our holiday giving may have 
added infinitesimally to the uplifting 
of society even though its poor per- 
formance but swelled the list of blun- 
ders. Of a certainty those who want 
to do right may learn how if they be 
so minded, while God alone knows 
whether those who want to do wrong 
may help themselves or be helped by 
anybody. Next year, being wiser by 

211 



just After a twelvemonth, we shall do better 
Christmas wliet her that better be more or less. 
Women who are tired in every 
nerve and fibre from the season's de- 
mands, if they do better another year 
will assuredly do less. 

Americans perpetually pay the 
penalty of their own invention. Ideas 
are not allowed to crystallize into cus- 
toms with us, but are shoved out of 
the way annually to make way for 
something new. Even the stupid peo- 
ple who are without originality and if 
left to themselves would of necessity 
repeat themselves, have learned to ex- 
pect a new spectacle at every turn. No 
merchant dares to decorate his window 
as he did a year ago, and the Christ- 
mas tree must bear a dazzling succes- 
sion of new and marvelous fruits for 
every midwinter harvest. 

Transplanted intelligence coping 
with the rigor of not over-fertile New 
England farms, developed an ingenu- 
ity which made the Yankee one of the 
wonders of the world; and the child 
of those conditions who had to do — 

212 



or do without — is the real inventor of Just After 
the mechanical toy which your small instmas 
son watches for a little and then turns 
from discontentedly to beg for some 
new diversion. 

The extinction of the small farm in 
America, with its countless demands 
for originality and invention, its long 
winter nights of study and its long 
summer days of experiment, will be 
felt more as years go on. The chil- 
dren who invented their own play- 
things, made different men and wo- 
men from those who are so surfeited 
with the invention of others that even 
curiosity is dulled. 

And yet these children of the kin- 
dergarten, the Sloyd, and the manual- 
training school will not of necessity 
be worse because they are different. 
More restless they will be no doubt, 
with a tendency to feverishness from 
crowding, and consequent friction, 
and because of this it is well for us to 
keep a jealous watch over the sim- 
plicity of their little lives; to give 
them more earth and sun and air, that 

213 



just After they may grow stronger and taller 
Christmas sp i r i tua Uy an d a tr jfl e nea rer the blue 

sky than their parents. 

If Christmas is in reality the chil- 
dren's festival, as we all are so fond 
of saying, let us make haste to sim- 
plify it, for it is we and not they who 
have made it a burden. He who makes 
it hard for children to be happy, by 
giving them more than they can as- 
similate or enjoy, brushes the dew off 
their lives and sprinkles them with 
dust. 



214 



HOW TO READ FICTION 

Time was when they instructed or 
tried to instruct you and me in music 
and painting. Now they are content 
with telling us "How to Listen to 
Music" and "How to Look at Pic- 
tures." The day is happily past when 
"if a girl loves painting she must 
paint," and the vital force once wasted 
in the godlike experiment of trying to 
make musicians and painters "in six 
days out of nothing and all very good" 
is now fortunately directed to teach- 
ing the common ones of us to know 
music when we hear it and a picture 
when we see it. 

But thus far at least I am unaware 
of any systematic attempt to tell a 
waiting public "How to Read Novels." 
I know there are those who are con- 
strained to suggest that a little well- 
seasoned advice as to how not to read 
novels is more urgently needed; but 

215 



How to these should remember that some one 
ea iction must rea( j even the bad books, to warn 

good people against them. 

It is so much easier to decry a class 
of people or of books than to study 
and discriminate, that the moral 
croaker, who always prefers being 
ignorantly miserable to intelligently 
happy, seems to enjoy the idea that 
large numbers of promising youth are 
being decoyed from the strait and 
narrow path of what they call "solid 
reading" by the wiles of the novelist: 
such seductive and harmful persons as 
Sarah Orne Jewett, William Dean 
Howells and the like. He who con- 
trasts "fiction and solid reading" as 
antipodal must bear in mind that 
Shakespeare and Dante and Milton 
and Cervantes wrote fiction; and 
while it may not be "solid" it seems 
to have some qualities that give it a 
permanent place in the foundations of 
literature. 

But while it is very true that much 
of the careful workmanship, the force, 
the delicate fancy, the illumination 

216 



Read Fiction 



that once found its way to us through How to 
history and poetry and essays and the 
drama, today comes to us through the 
channel of fiction, it is equally true 
that the stream is muddied by much 
that had better not come to us at all. 
Having found the surest way to the 
heart, it is not strange that many un- 
desirable travelers are found therein. 
But we have no safety from them save 
in our ability to discriminate between 
good and bad literature, and this abil- 
ity does not come from ignorance. 

To the uninitiated I suppose a 
story is a story and the readers thereof 
a dissipated class, who partake of un- 
realities as a drunkard of drink — to 
drown realities. That there is such a 
class one is forced to admit if one 
would logically account for the mass 
of hopeless crudity, or worse, annu- 
ally put forth under the name of fic- 
tion. But these readers are as far 
from the discriminating novel-reader 
as the devotee of the nickelodeon from 
the lover of Shakespearean drama. 

I remember a scholarly scientist 

217 



Read Fiction 



How to who devoted the day spent on a rail- 
way train delayed by a wreck in de- 
lighted absorption of his first and only 
novel. It was procured as a last re- 
sort from the train-boy, and was 
called "The Brazen Lily, or Tried by 
Fire." To his untutored palate it 
had a new and exquisite flavor, and 
thereafter, whenever the subject of fic- 
tion came up, he would turn an eager 
gaze upon those present and ask, 
"Have you read The Brazen Lily?" 
Oft-repeated disappointment in the re- 
sponse failed to rob his voice of en- 
thusiasm as he said, "Well, you ought 
to read it. It's one of the grandest 
books ever written." 

We walk among our fellow-men as 
we walk among flowers and weeds, ex- 
periencing delight or aversion with- 
out knowledge: human characteris- 
tics go unclassified and unaccounted 
for by the great mass of observers. 

I have seen a young woman, fault- 
lessly clad, obliged to seat herself in 
a crowded train beside a man whose 
unique dress and strongly marked old 

218 



face made him worth ten thousand How to 
Velasquez or Rembrandt heads to 
look at, and whose quaint speech if 
one could hear it would be rich with 
the terse richness of those who draw 
their vigor from the earth itself. And 
how did the young woman sit? On 
the edge of the seat, turned a little, 
for fear the traveling world might 
identify her with her companion. And 
what was she doing? Reading "Lorna 
Doone." And tomorrow she will tell 
me she thinks John Ridd "the most 
magnificent character in fiction." Pos- 
sibly she was riding beside him while 
she read, and wished him at the North 
Pole because he wore overalls and 
suggested tobacco. 

It is well for such young women 
that there are Blackmores, to 

"make [their] vision sane and clear 
That [they] may see what beauty clings 
In common forms, and find the soul 
Of unregarded things." 

For, bye and bye, with much reading, 
they will fall to thinking; and even 
though they may never know human 

219 



Read Fiction 



How to nature as the artist knows it, they will 
know that they do not know, and per- 
haps they will grow respectful toward 
humanity in consequence. 

There are those who venture an 
opinion on a novel as freely as on a 
pudding, and who consider that 
"knowing what one likes" is sufficient 
preparation for intelligent criticism. 
Indeed, those very superior souls who 
"never read novels" are always the 
most bitter in their denunciation of 
them; and I have known two men to 
spend half an hour in discussing the 
evil of "light reading" who had read 
nothing but newspapers for ten years. 
Ignorance of the other arts is gener- 
ally supposed to develop a certain reti- 
cence in the expression of opinion con- 
cerning them; it is not likely that one 
who, knowing nothing of music, 
should drop in on a Paderewski recital 
would be greatly delighted or would 
venture an opinion on the merits of 
the performance; but the man or wo- 
man who cannot appreciate good fic- 
tion seems disposed to flaunt the de- 

220 



ficiency. People who do not read How to 
poetry or essays or history or science ea lctlon 
or the classic drama generally keep 
these limitations modestly in the back- 
ground if, indeed, they do not deny 
them; but those who say, "I never 
read novels," always say it with that 
peculiar final snap of the jaws that in- 
dicates a sense of superior virtue; and 
this self-approval seems not a whit 
modified in those that read nothing 
at all. 

To those that read novels merely 
for amusement or, as they say, "to 
pass the time," I have not a word to 
say. To find pleasure of the keenest 
sort in any pursuit is very different 
from pursuing anything only for 
pleasure. 

The question is not how many but 
what kind of novels. Taste for the 
highest and best is never, can never 
become a dissipation; and the young 
person who devours trashy fiction is 
usually the child of those that con- 
demn without knowledge. 

Much concern is manifested in 

221 



How to various quarters over the large per- 

Read Fiction Qentage of fiction j n Qur pubHc Hbra _ 

ries, but in all the wails over this very 
reasonable and natural fact almost 
nothing is said of the character of the 
fiction circulated, whose significance 
might appear were some careful sta- 
tistics at our disposal. These would 
show at the outset the absence of the 
most alarming feature, for our libra- 
ries do not contain the lowest type of 
fiction, although they do of necessity 
(being no better than the people that 
support them) provide much that is of 
indifferent worth. The inquiry would 
next show a large proportion of those 
borrowing novels to be also readers of 
general literature — essays, travels, 
biography, history; for one cannot 
have a cultivated taste in one depart- 
ment of literature without a generous 
interest in all others. 

Frowned upon by the pulpit and 
viewed askance by the schoolmaster, 
the novel has yet gone steadily for- 
ward in public esteem, until today the 
man (I believe it is generally a man) 

222 



who announces that he "never reads How to 
fiction" thereby forfeits his claim to ReadFiction 
general culture. The progress of the 
world is marked by the interest of man 
in his fellow-man, and however his- 
tory, statistics, theoretical economics 
and sociology may serve to enlighten 
the mind of man concerning life — the 
joys, the sorrows, the aspirations, the 
disappointments and the successes of 
his fellows — above them all, as a 
source of such enlightenment, we 
must place the conscientious novel. 

The "conscientious" novel, I say; 
for, if morality is observance of the 
true relations of things, the writer 
who gives us a distorted view of hu- 
man nature is answerable for a griev- 
ous sin. For men and women get 
their ideas of human nature chiefly 
from books, despite the prevalent be- 
lief to the contrary. Not one indi- 
vidual in a thousand is able to deduce 
anything definite from the mass of 
human phenomena that surrounds 
him. 

It follows that one cannot write 

223 



Read Fiction 



How to worthily of what one knows super- 
ficially or by hearsay. The stuff of 
which conditions and incidents are 
made must be as ready to the novel- 
ist's hand as the paint to the painter, 
clay to the potter. When, therefore, a 
writer goes out of the life he has lived 
into the life of which he is a spectator 
only, the soul goes out of his work. 

"A Window in Thrums," to take a 
charming bit of fiction, is unquestion- 
ably a work of pure imagination; but 
the stuff from which that imaginary 
picture of real life is made came out of 
the life of the author. And we all 
know how refreshing its natural flavor 
is, compared with the fermentation of 
almost everything else that Barrie has 
written. 

Books that become the fad are 
generally, some one has said, either 
bad art or bad morals. He might have 
omitted the bad art, for bad art is bad 
morals. The book seized upon with 
frenzy by the general public is pre- 
eminently the novel of today — but 
not of tomorrow. It is made of what 

224 



the mass of readers wish were true; How to 
and their wishes will change tomor- ea lctlon 
row and with them their taste; the 
truth alone will remain. 

In the wake of the simple and seri- 
ous realism of Tolstoi and the other 
Russians who with sombre conscien- 
tiousness told the story of human life 
as they saw it, came a horde of would- 
be realists who said, "These men are 
great and they have written of evil; 
let me but write of evil and I shall be 
great." And following in their train 
has come the ethical novel which in its 
effort to popularize reform too often 
succeeds only in popularizing vice. All 
of these — the pessimist, the morbid 
historian of crime, the hysterical sym- 
bolist — are temporary; they are the 
tramps and hangers-on of literary 
progress. And because the world is 
tiring of them (the only world that 
has ever found them other than 
tiresome) there are hasty prophets 
abroad who tell us that we are to have 
a revival of romanticism. There will 
doubtless be a revival of something, 

225 



How to and possibly that something may be 
ea ic ion roman tj c j sm# That the highest truth 
is compatible with the highest imag- 
ination, is thereby indeed revealed, is 
a lesson that the best critics have 
learned and taught us. Both of these 
go to make the novelist of the future. 
And to the man or woman to whom it 
is given to show us our brother, to 
reveal the humanity that lies beneath 
the unpromising exteriors, to open for 
us the recesses of human motives, to 
trace the threads of human influences 
— to this man or woman we shall do 
ever-increasing honor. 

Oh yes, you will say, genius ! But 
what about the great mass of novels 
that are not the product of genius, 
that are out of focus, indifferently 
written, unreal? Shall we toil through 
these for the sake of the occasional 
"find"? 

Through them, no; but among 
them, yes. What is life but the pur- 
suit of perfection, and what is pure 
joy but rewarded search? After all, 
is it any worse than the other scien- 

226 



tific pursuits: the dragging of the How to 

i j i i • r Read Fiction 

ocean-bed and bringing up masses of 
life to be overhauled for the bliss of a 
discovery; the patient clipping away 
of uninteresting limestone to release 
a new crinoid — the endless search 
among the known in quest of the great 
unknown? Why sit lazily by and let 
posterity decide for us what is great? 
Why fear to risk our judgment on the 
present? The value of the study of 
human life as recorded in the best fic- 
tion makes it quite worth while to be 
able to recognize the best fiction when 
found; and as the test is always at 
hand there is no reason why conscien- 
tious readers should not learn to ap- 
ply it. 

The test of good fiction is beyond 
question its veracity, and to apply this 
test one must cultivate his own powers 
of observation, must learn to look at 
life with steady, unprejudiced eyes, 
must lay aside what he wishes were 
true and satisfy his soul with what is 
true. By true I do not of course mean 
in detail but in proportion. And by 

227 



How to properly proportioned fiction I mean 
Read Fiction that w hich stands the test of human 

experience — a test quite as readily ap- 
plied to romantic as to realistic liter- 
ature. 

The educated taste succumbs at 
once to properly proportioned fiction, 
be it realism or romance; each is con- 
vincing in its own way. There is of 
course the purely fanciful tale, which 
makes no demand upon credulity. But 
the unreal novel is distinctly immoral. 
Pretending to represent life it mis- 
represents it, gives results out of pro- 
portion to causes, makes bad appear 
good, treats flippantly serious ills, 
gives undue prominence to emotion, 
lulls the reader into the belief that 
what he finds attractive is true. 

Strangely enough, even the ignor- 
ant are constrained to get their knowl- 
edge of life from books. The factory- 
girl and the milliner's apprentice can- 
not generalize for themselves. If they 
could, matrimony for them, reasoning 
by analogy, would mean hard work, 
narrow economy, days of weariness 

228 



lighted up by occasional joys, the love How to 
and the loss of children, reason for 
gladness if they escape unkindness or 
neglect — the life, in short, that their 
mothers have led. 

To escape this picture, against 
which their fancy rebels, we find them 
eagerly following the fate of ignorant 
but beautiful maidens snatched from 
the cruel embrace of poverty by high- 
born suitors, and living thereafter ten- 
derly loved and thickly encrusted with 
diamonds — a fate set forth in the 
pages of the countless cheap publica- 
tions whose titles and whose authors 
are utterly without interest to you and 
me save as they prove the universal 
human preference for the story above 
all other forms of writing. 

And since this preference is uni- 
versal, why not accord it the dignity it 
deserves ? Human instinct is not to be 
despised, and if ignorant and learned 
alike feel the influence of any force, 
there can be little doubt of its value. 
Name the ten great books of the 
world, and see how many of them are 

229 



How to fiction. Name fifty authors who are 
secure in the hearts of the people and 
see how many of those who are not 
poets are novelists, or dramatists, 
which is the same thing. There is no 
more reason for wholesale condemna- 
tion of fiction, or even for an attitude 
of condescension toward it, because 
much that is worthless assumes that 
form, than there is for the same atti- 
tude toward the essay because many 
newspapers contain poor editorials. 

And speaking of newspapers, why 
is it that the man, even very much 
above the average, who mentions his 
wife's interest in novels with a patron- 
izing smile, makes no apology for the 
hours he spends on the daily papers, 
which are often fiction and very poor 
fiction at that? Is it possible that 
reading the production of crude young 
reporters, whose desire for sensation 
is greater than their love for truth, 
and whose literary style is a mixture 
of modern slang and ancient plati- 
tudes, is a virile and strengthening oc- 
cupation, whereas perusing the works 

230 



of Howells and James, Hardy and How to 
Meredith, not to mention Thackeray, ReadFiction 
Scott, Dickens, George Eliot, Perez 
Galdos, Tolstoi, Balzac, Kielland, Gia- 
cosa, is enervating and effeminate? 

I am willing to allow that a man 
may succeed in life without being a 
novel-reader, but I am very certain 
that he will not fully enjoy his suc- 
cess. All the thoroughly happy peo- 
ple I have known read novels. Their 
happiness may not have resulted en- 
tirely from their choice of literature, 
but admitting that it did not, the con- 
clusion is untouched that the novel- 
reading temperament is the happy 
temperament. Of course one now and 
then meets an unhappy reader of fic- 
tion. But this human phenomenon is 
no doubt saved from suicidal misery 
by his one redeeming interest. Or it 
may be he reads merely to write re- 
views. 

All this is easy to explain. In a 
world of mystery, a willy-nilly exist- 
ence unsolved and unsolvable, the in- 
dividual who cannot find amusement 

231 



How to in the antics of his fellow-creatures, 
iction w ^ ta ^ es himself and them forever 
seriously, who refuses to be pleased by 
the spectacle, who is persistently 
strenuous, who cannot enjoy seeing 
others do what he does not enjoy do- 
ing — this perfectly reliable and doubt- 
less praiseworthy and useful citizen is 
not, I regret to say, a happy man. 

Virtue is no doubt its own reward, 
but different virtues have different re- 
wards; and since we cannot make 
society do as we wish, the next best 
thing is to study its habits, observe its 
evolution, and convince ourselves that 
the moral as well as the physical world 
moves, and always onward. 

To try fiction by human life is 
valuable mental exercise. It lends a 
new zest both to reading and to exist- 
ence, and this fact explains the readi- 
ness with which the cultivated turn 
from any abstraction to discuss the 
novel. Those who are wont to con- 
sider such conversation trifling would 
do well to stop and question. The art 
of living is of universal importance 

232 



and interest. An unwritten law for- How to 
bids you and me publicly to criticize ea lctlon 
our neighbor's private life; but public 
opinion on private affairs is an abso- 
lute necessity for the advance and se- 
curity of morals. All discussions of 
human life as portrayed by the high- 
est art in fiction are in reality discus- 
sions of life itself, and belong there- 
fore to the natural and proper study 
of mankind. 

Many and diverse reasons have 
been advanced to account for the pre- 
ponderance of women among novel 
readers. Candidly, I am not certain 
that they are in the majority, but the 
assertion is so common that we have 
learned to accept it as true. Just how 
the statistics have been collected or 
who has done the collecting no one 
knows. If in public libraries, one 
must bear in mind that as men are 
otherwise employed during the day 
women procure books for them as well 
as for themselves. Allowing however 
that the statement is correct, may it 
not grow out of the fact that men have 

233 



How to been more occupied with the business 
ea ic ion ^ ma k m g a ij v i n g than with the art 

of living; and is it not another evi- 
dence that the social conscience is 
rather too largely feminine? Instead 
of treating it as a feminine weakness I 
am disposed to regard it as a mascu- 
line limitation. 

Speaking frankly of the difference 
in the conversation of cultivated men 
and women, I have found that one 
must keep very close to material 
facts to insure a man's interest, while 
women discuss principles, usually 
through the medium of fiction. Men 
that read novels are almost without 
exception conversationally delightful. 

No one can read fiction properly 
who is not appreciative of the writer's 
art. To read for the story alone is like 
eating to satisfy hunger with no sense 
of taste. These are the readers who 
if they are frivolous minded mourn be- 
cause a tale does not "turn out well," 
or because it does not point a moral if 
they are serious. It is very bad art 
that has to label itself, and human life, 

234 



to teach no lesson, must be very im- How to 
perfectly represented. As a writer's ea lctlon 
own morals are best displayed by his 
character, the morals of his book are 
best taught by his characters; if his 
concern is not with them but with 
preaching, let him lay down his pen 
and enter the pulpit. 

Delight in the novelist's art is not 
acquired in a day, but this should not 
make it the less worth acquiring. If 
after zealous effort there are those to 
whom it does not come they must, I 
suppose, continue to read for the 
story, as there are those to whom 
music is only tune, poetry rhyme and 
painting color. I can only extend to 
these unfortunates my commiseration, 
even though I hold them in part re- 
sponsible for the modern historical 
novel which was invented, but unfor- 
tunately never patented, to meet their 
demands. 



235 



THE HISTORICAL NOVEL 

There is a prevalent but erroneous 
belief that people read books because 
they like them. Just how a person can 
like a book before he has read it no one 
seems to inquire. Manifestly people 
do many things, among them read 
books, to find whether they like them 
or not. And yet, curiously enough, 
when we learn from the pages of an 
entirely unbiased periodical published 
by the publishers of the work in ques- 
tion, that several hundred thou- 
sand copies of "The Swashbuckler's 
Sword," a romance of the seventeenth 
century, have been ordered in ad- 
vance; and later that these copies 
have all been sold and the public is 
loudly clamoring for more — we in- 
stantly decide that several hundred 
thousand readers have pronounced the 
book a success. And when to this evi- 
dence of popularity there is added a 

236 



half-tone of the unknown author in his The 
study, or on his bicycle, or in his Novd" lca 
mother's arms, being a modest people 
and democratic withal, we graciously 
submit to the voice of the majority 
and proceed to read his book. 

The chances are that we find it 
very bad. But remembering that sev- 
eral hundred thousand of our fellow- 
citizens have liked it, we crush out any 
lingering traces of taste we may pos- 
sess and complete our task. The next 
month we have our reward in being 
included in another group of six fig- 
ures that has added its voice to the 
public clamor for this new and "epoch- 
making" work of art. The book has 
become what the trade calls, some- 
what ambiguously, "a phenomenal 
seller." Undoubtedly "The Swash- 
buckler's Sword" sells. I know this 
from personal experience, having fre- 
quently been a victim. 

It is evident therefore that the rea- 
son why anyone reads a book for the 
first time is not that he likes it but 
that somebody else likes it. Of course, 

237 



The having begun, he is under no obliga- 
1S Novel tion to finish; but if he finds it very 
dull his curiosity is piqued to find 
what so many others have found inter- 
esting; or his vanity is touched for 
fear it may be too good for his limited 
appreciation; or, being an American 
and unaccustomed to defeat, he makes 
his way through it in spite of obsta- 
cles, merely because he was foolish 
enough to begin. 

In the matter of books at least, it 
by no means follows that the public 
likes what it takes; what it does is to 
take what it can get; and just at pres- 
ent it can get the historical novel. The 
ingenuity and talent of numerous 
writers is being employed in the ap- 
plication of the story-form to history. 
The result is neither art nor truth, and 
instead of being called historical fic- 
tion might much more properly be 
styled fictitious history. 

To speak disrespectfully of any 
historical romance of the past few 
years savors of the impropriety that 
attaches to censure of the newly dead. 

238 



But without in any way underrating The 
the ability, the industry, the sincerity Novel" 051 
of purpose that have gone into this 
form of writing, we may be allowed 
to lament their misdirection. 

Fiction should be true, and to this 
end it should keep clear of the truth; 
but above all things it should keep 
clear of that kind of truth that comes 
to the writer by hearsay rather than 
experience. The fiction that faith- 
fully represents the life of today, sim- 
ple as it may appear to the reader, is 
by far the most difficult of production. 
This fact alone will account for the 
readiness with which many writers, 
some of whom are capable of better 
things, have allowed themselves to be 
drawn away from their legitimate art 
to the making of tales concerning the 
truth or falsity of which there can be 
no test. The reliable critic of the his- 
torical novel died before it was born; 
neither its writer nor its critic of today 
knows whereof he affirms. 

The claim of the novel to perma- 
nence rests first of all upon the name- 

239 



The less human element to which all hu- 
1S Novei mankind responds; but there is an- 
other and equally legitimate claim in 
the veracity of the picture of social life 
which it presents. In this each age 
must answer for itself. One hundred 
years hence who will care what we of 
today have fancied about society in 
the seventeenth century? Yet witness 
the interest that still attaches to the 
pictures of English life given by Field- 
ing, Jane Austen and even Miss Bur- 
ney in their day. 

Far better that the talent of our 
own time should set about saving us 
from the ruthless pens of the twenty- 
third century, which may otherwise 
justly decide that the opening of the 
twentieth century has never been ade- 
quately represented and proceed to 
travesty us as we deserve. 

The novelist that cannot make his 
own time interesting, that can find no 
phase of life upon which to throw his 
light, makes public confession of fail- 
ure by turning to the past. Now and 
then he does it to display his versa- 

240 



tility, but oftener I think he does it The 
because it is easier to do, or because Novel" * 
there are others doing it, or because 
he chooses to call the public willing- 
ness to buy a demand. 

The genuine novel of any time is a 
valuable document, a contribution to 
history; but the modern historical 
novel throws about as much light up- 
on the life of the past as a fancy dress 
ball. That it will not long prevail 
goes without saying, for a certain 
American public requires as frequent 
changes in its fiction as in its break- 
fast-foods, and selects both by the 
same method — from advertisements. 

In our youth there were publica- 
tions called yellow-back novels, in 
which pirates and banditti, wild In- 
dians and highwaymen, curdled the 
blood to that consistency which youth 
seems to find thrilling; and now that 
we are old, or at least older, we have 
the historical romance, which invites 
us to slide about on decks slippery 
with gore, witness the most excruci- 
ating tortures and wade after the hero 

241 



The through rivers of blood until he clasps 
1S Novel the fainting heroine in his velvet arms 
slashed with satin, and declares his 
love in twentieth century English 
mixed with seventeenth century 
slang. 

No amount of study, of hunting 
over libraries or delving into musty 
volumes will acquaint one with more 
than the husk of the life once lived. 
The atmosphere of that life perished 
with it. And as the true novel is a 
selection of detail by one permeated 
with the life of which it is the mani- 
festation, the time that produces no 
adequate chronicler must go un- 
chronicled. 

If, even in our time, the writer of 
one nation finds it quite impossible by 
study, and well-nigh impossible by 
long residence, to take on the atmos- 
phere of another civilization which is 
at his very door, how shall he do any- 
thing with that which is gone? 

Our own Spanish-American life in 
Southern California, a life full of ro- 
mance and adventure, has never yet 

242 



been adequately reproduced in fiction; The 
and until there arise among the people Novel" 03, 
who by birth and tradition are a part 
of that life, an artist to portray it, it 
must and should remain untouched. 
We know much of it from the records 
available; what we do not know we 
can never learn from tampering with 
those records. 

There is far too much written in 
these days of ready pens and eager 
readers; and as it is not the number 
who are reading a book, but the num- 
ber who will reread it that establishes 
its claim to our regard, most of us will, 
I think, find life simplified when the 
historical romance becomes what in 
spite of its pretensions it has never 
been — a thing of the past. 



243 



WHAT IS AN IMMORAL 
NOVEL? 

The day of cocksureness in morals 
is long past, and yet morals remain 
even more secure than ever. We are 
slowly disentangling them from pre- 
judice and tradition. "It is written" 
is giving place to "it is for the greatest 
good." In some respects these two 
were never at war, since many things 
that were written were for the great- 
est good, and were written for that 
reason. Men will differ as to the great- 
est good, but not more widely than 
they have differed as to the meaning 
of what was written. 

The time will not come when even 
the best of fiction will be the best for 
all the world to read at all times. 
Character is not always affected in the 
same way by the same influences, and 
a book may be therefore baneful to 
one reader and harmless even if not 

244 



strictly beneficial to another. The What is an 

j • j • r -i Immoral 

crude mind is of course more easily Novel 
duped than the sophisticated, and this 
is true elsewhere than in the world of 
letters. 

It is not likely for instance that 
parents will ever agree as to the exact 
time and way of acquainting their 
children and youth with the facts of 
life. For this reason certain books 
must always remain objectionable to 
those parents who are too indolent 
mentally to inform themselves and 
control their children, and who want 
society to do their work. Religious 
instruction they have delegated to the 
Sunday-school, literature they have 
turned over to the public school, and 
morals they would like to commit to 
the care of the public librarian, asking 
her to have nothing on the shelves 
that their young people are not ready 
to read, digest and assimilate — thus 
reducing the duty of parents to the 
payment of taxes. 

Much has been said concerning the 
domination of the Young Person, par- 

245 



What is an ticularly the ubiquitous young wo- 
m Novei m an, over our fiction. Most of this 
has been said by writers who intimate 
that they would like to be much more 
immoral than they are, and few of 
whom could be. No real artist 
troubles himself greatly about his 
public; insofar as he does he is pan- 
dering to something lower than art. 
An author who loves his fellow-men 
will not hurt them. The author who 
loves himself, his fame, his greed, his 
glory, will do as other men do who 
love themselves better than others. 
Novel-writing is today a business with 
many people, just as much a business 
as money-lending, real-estate and in- 
surance. It bears in many cases no 
more relation to literature than those 
industries. We are paying the pen- 
alty of having taught the wayfaring 
man, though a fool, to read. He cla- 
mors for what he likes; he (or should 
we say she?) stands with his dollar in 
sight asking for excitement, just as he 
begs for sporting news, prize-fights, 
vaudeville and scandal of the daily 

246 



newspapers; and he gets it because What is an 
those who have it to sell want the dol- N^vef* 
lar, or, seeing his dollar, they imagine 
his want and as soon as may be sup- 
ply it. 

These things do not indicate that 
public taste is lower than it once was. 
Public taste was always bad. They 
simply prove that public expression of 
bad taste has become common. If the 
Young Person is any check on this we 
should welcome instead of deplore it. 
But that he, or perhaps again I should 
say she, is a check upon the highest 
forms of fiction is absurd. 

As one sin differeth from another 
in the minds of men, a given book will 
seem more or less injurious according 
to the reader's perspective. It is not 
the knowledge of evil that makes us 
do wrong, but an erroneous idea of the 
relations of things. Hence a book that 
distorts our vision is immoral. 

There is great difficulty in procur- 
ing accurate moral statistics, but I 
have little doubt that a great injury 
has been wrought socially by the over- 

247 



What is an supply of fiction concerning the very 
m Novd rich an d the very poor, perhaps more 
by the former than the latter. To my 
surprise I learned a short time since, 
from what I believe to be a reliable 
source, that only ten per cent of 
American families keep even one 
servant. I immediately set about 
accounting for my surprise, and, com- 
paring the statement with my knowl- 
edge of the life around me, was as- 
sured of its correctness. My surprise 
arose I am convinced from the preval- 
ence of the very rich, or perhaps not 
the very rich but the comfortable, in 
American fiction. I ran over the cur- 
rent magazines and found fully nine- 
tenths of the fiction dealing with the 
servant-keeping class, and entirely 
too large a proportion of these be- 
longed to those keeping a large num- 
ber of servants. 

Such misleading pictures may not 
seem immoral in any large sense, but 
I fancy the effect is bad. There are 
countless immoral tendencies in the 
hopes and aspirations excited by this 

248 



false estimate of society on the part of What is an 
those who get from novels their idea Novel™ 
of life beyond their own narrow ex- 
periences. 

Furthermore, not all the facts of 
life are worthy of a place in literature 
as they are not worthy of a place in 
conversation, and the dignifying of 
them by giving them this prominence 
is a sin against the true principles of 
art. The mere writing about some 
things undeniably true makes them 
unduly large on the canvas of life. 
Perhaps it is the number of books on 
illicit love which is immoral, rather 
than their character. 

Women are accused (whether 
rightfully or not I leave you to deter- 
mine) of laying too much stress, in 
their definition of morality, on the re- 
lations of men and women. If they 
do, it is doubtless because the whole 
burden of these relations has been laid 
upon them, and naturally they over- 
estimate the one sin that costs them so 
dear in the eyes of the world, and the 
one virtue committed, however un- 

249 



What is an justly, to their especial care. I do not 
m Novei intend, however, to confine the word 
immorality to this narrow, as some 
would say, this feminine sense. But 
that there are a large number of novels 
dealing with this phase of evil we are 
all unhappily aware. 

At the risk of irrelevance, I wish to 
say what I have been saying at inter- 
vals for twenty years without percep- 
tible effect on public opinion — that 
women are quite as just to women as 
men are to men. They are indeed just 
to women where men are lax in their 
judgment. Women, it is true, do not 
make excuses for certain sins among 
women because they know that such 
excuses are maudlin sentimentality. 
Men excuse and defend each other, are 
"loyal" to each other as they call it, 
because no one of them knows when 
he may need the good offices of his sex 
in his own defense. And men are ab- 
surdly lenient to women, "charitable" 
they call it, because those among them 
who attempt to be fair to women try 
them by their own standard, which 

250 



I regret to say is not all that it What is an 
should be. N^vei ra 

I am aware that women are hard 
toward certain forms of evil among 
women, and I am rather glad that this 
is so. It is no doubt what has made us 
so very, very good. If we are to be- 
lieve men, who are constantly telling 
us how virtuously superior we are to 
them, our plan with women has cer- 
tainly worked better than theirs with 
men. Possibly the sauce that has 
made of woman such a highly moral 
and delicious goose might make of 
man an equally moral and delectable 
gander. The experiment is certainly 
worth trying. 

Returning from this digression, let 
me quote Mr. W. H. Mallock, who 
whatever his faults cannot be accused 
of being either a flippant or thought- 
less writer. In his introduction to "A 
Human Document" he says: "I believe 
that any picture of life if only com- 
plete so far as its subject goes will be 
sure to convey some moral or other, 
though what that moral is may vary 

251 



What is an with the minds that look at it. It will 
m Novei m an y case be sounder than any that 
could be conveyed by illustrations 
manipulated for the special purpose of 
conveying it; and a complete auto- 
biography of the conscience of a single 
profligate, were such a thing possible, 
would teach us more than a dozen de- 
scriptions of the selected pieties of 
saints. Finally, if the book is com- 
plained of because people who are not 
technically virtuous are shown in it to 
have been ultimately happy, as such 
people often are, I would point out 
that their happiness, such as it is, re- 
sults from qualities in them which 
everyone must admire, and not from 
those of their actions, which perhaps 
most people will condemn." 

One reads such opinions as this 
with a feeling of being in moral quick- 
sand, and yet the writer is unques- 
tionably correct when he says that 
those who do wrong — that is, your 
wrong and my wrong — are frequently 
happy. But if we stop here in our an- 
alysis, the bulwark of our plea for 

252 



moral fiction goes to the enemy. We What is an 
have so long insisted that evil deeds — N^vei"* 1 
which means of course what we con- 
sider such — should be represented as 
bringing their own punishment (a re- 
sult that makes the recital of all im- 
morality strictly moral) that we lose 
the very ground from under our feet 
before Mr. Mallock's bold statement. 
But is it not, after all, merely a ques- 
tion of standards? Doing evil — your 
evil- — brings you unhappiness; not in 
the world's eyes perhaps, for the world 
may be ignorant of your sin, but in re- 
morse. But, once convinced that 
what you do is right, even by mistaken 
reasoning, remorse vanishes and hap- 
piness is as likely to ensue as unhap- 
piness. 

Take the case of George Eliot and 
George Lewes. Few of us care to say 
more about it than that we are glad of 
a life, however averse to it all our tra- 
ditions and prejudices, that unques- 
tionably gave us the fruits of a rare 
and remarkable genius. Most of us 
perhaps have no fault to find with it 

253 



What is an morally, however reluctant we may be 
m Novei t° announce the fact, but none of us 
can deny that outwardly at least it 
was a peaceful, congenial and happy 
life. If inwardly it was otherwise, it 
must have been from remorse, which 
we have nothing to indicate that 
either suffered. 

We all have the test of reality, of 
correct proportion, at hand. Life sur- 
rounds us. The fiction that helps us 
to look at it steadily, that makes our 
vision sane and clear, is good fiction, 
no matter what it deals with. For 
there is nothing in human life, sin- 
cerely and artistically dealt with, that 
is uninteresting, as there is nothing in 
nature beneath the notice of the sci- 
entist. 

We all have the test of life at hand, 
but just why we shrink from applying 
it to our fiction no one knows. For 
example, a recent and much discussed 
novel makes a young woman of re- 
ligious, perhaps superstitious tradi- 
tions, correct life, good instincts — 
indeed a young woman whom the au- 

254 



thor evidently admires and expects What is an 
the reader to admire — deliberately Nov°i ra 
decide to fling aside all the restraints 
amid which she has been reared — re- 
spectability, virtue, religious teaching, 
love of kindred — for a man whose 
conduct toward her has been cowardly 
and for whom she feels, passion per- 
haps, but not the worship and confi- 
dence which alone would ennoble and 
dignify that passion. She is saved 
from this sacrifice of herself, saved 
outwardly that is, but ruined all the 
same, by what has existed from the 
beginning — her brother's love. 

Now how many good girls, even 
moderately good girls, have you and 
I known who would calmly entertain 
such intentions as are put into the 
mind of this young woman, in the face 
of tradition, kindred, religious train- 
ing and conscience? She was not de- 
ceived, her eyes were open, she delib- 
erately chose evil, and not only evil 
but disgrace. And yet the writer 
thinks and wishes us to think her a 
noble woman. 

255 



What is an Higher in the realm of fiction of 

m Novel tat e another young woman delib- 
erately chooses shame for love of a 
craven lover, and is saved from bodily 
sin by a good young man who tells her 
that her grandfather is very ill. As if 
the illness of grandfathers were not an 
every-day occurrence, the restraining 
influence of which, to a woman bent 
upon evil, would be but a straw. 

These women, instantaneously 
converted or perverted, are the card- 
board-grasshoppers of which Mr. 
Howells writes: "so much easier to 
handle than the real thing, quieter un- 
der the literary microscope, skilfully 
colored, portable and, it would seem, 
practically indestructible. No doubt 
writers will continue to use them, as 
they do great wealth and other stage- 
properties, so long as the bulk of read- 
ers prefer to read of what seems mys- 
terious to them." 

After all, we have made too little of 
genius in the reader. He needs it al- 
most as much as the writer. It is not 
given to many of us really to love life 

256 



— poor everyday life, the life upon What is an 
which we depend for happiness. But NmS^ 
to read aright we must love it, guard it 
jealously, and cry out when it is fal- 
sified. 



257 



IF I WERE 

At first I thought of calling this 
paper "The Reflections of an Inca- 
pacitated Reformer," and even now it 
is not my intention to leave any mat- 
ter untouched upon. When one has 
industriously followed for a long time 
the business of reforming the world, 
it is really a great relief to be tem- 
porarily laid upon the shelf. To awake 
every morning knowing that society is 
going to the dogs, but that you, at 
least, cannot be expected to do any- 
thing to prevent it; to lie quietly in 
bed and think, "Now if I were well I 
should never allow things to go on in 
this way, but being ill I am obliged to 
trust in Providence" — is certainly, as 
the ladies say, "restful." And it is 
gratifying to notice that as you get a 
little better things do really seem to 
improve, which justifies the feeling 
that if you were actually on your legs 

258 



some sort of order might be evolved If I Were- 
out of the social chaos. 

It is a comparatively easy matter 
to manage the universe when you are 
on a liquid diet. The trouble begins 
when you get up and try to attend to 
your own business. Settling the Rus- 
sian-Japanese question is simple com- 
pared with keeping ants out of the 
pantry or deciding whether you will 
need three or five loads of gravel for 
the front driveway. 

These facts lead one to inquire 
whether all the ills of life do not arise 
from having to make up one's mind. 
There is a tradition among women 
that when men are very sick they are 
perfectly angelic. I do not know 
whether this article of feminine belief 
is known to men or not, but I trust I 
am not betraying the confidence of my 
sex in thus explaining your wife's 
manifest alarm when you display or- 
dinary amiability. Personally, I have 
always attributed all masculine faults 
of disposition to the bad habit men 
have of making up their minds. I 

259 



If I Were— think the correctness of my view is 
attested by the fact that when they 
are so helpless that their minds are 
made up for them, they immediately 
become docile and sweet-tempered. 

Now, women have so long been de- 
prived of this privilege that it has re- 
sulted either in their having no minds 
at all or no ability to make them up, 
both of which results are conducive, I 
am convinced, to placidity of temper. 
And if woman insists, as she has re- 
cently been doing, upon cultivating 
her mind, I am very much afraid that 
she will go further and insist on mak- 
ing it up; and then alas for domestic 
peace and unity ! The only way that I 
can see to avert this calamity is for 
every woman to make up her mind not 
to have any mind of her own to make 
up; in this way she can retain her su- 
premacy and remain just the sweetest 
thing on earth. 

As for men, I suppose they will 
continue to value, for themselves, ev- 
ery other kind of ability above amia- 
bility; and we must continue to de- 

260 



pend upon a chastening providence if I Were - 
for glimpses of their innate gentle- 
ness. This proves only that doing has 
more charms than being, unless in- 
deed it proves that men do not, after 
all, think so highly of us as they pre- 
tend, certainly not highly enough to 
lead them to emulate our virtues. 
When we consider how very good and 
superior we women are, it is strange 
that men do not envy us more openly. 
I do not remember ever to have heard 
a man wish he were a woman ; and yet 
I have heard several men enlarge upon 
the surpassing excellence of womanly 
qualities, the wide nature of her influ- 
ence and the superior advantages of 
her position, expressing the deepest 
astonishment, not to say pain, that 
she should manifest any discontent 
with the circumstances in which 
providence, with their assistance, has 
placed her. 

These hopeless complications arise 
from having different standards of 
conduct for the sexes ; and yet it was 
a man who stirred up all the excite- 

261 



if I Were— ment about The Simple Life. True, 
women had been working at the prob- 
lem for a long time; they have tried 
to be as simple as men could desire. 
All they have been anxious to know 
was how to get rid of the hope- 
less complexities man's industry has 
brought about. And now to have a 
man arise and urge simplicity upon 
us, without telling us what it is or 
how to obtain it, is rather trying. 

Life was complex enough before 
this problem of simplicity was added 
to it; but since it has been added, we 
must resolutely set ourselves to solve 
it. Thus far, Mr. Dooley seems to 
have offered the only logical way out 
of the difficulty; his advice to Hen- 
nessy is, "Ef yer poor, Hennessy, be 
simply poor" (which most of us have 
tried and found perfectly practicable) 
"an' ef yer rich, be simply rich" — 
which might not prove as easy, but 
which most of us would be willing to 
attempt. 

Simplicity, then, is a state of mind 
and not a state of society. Complex- 

262 



ity is inevitable, and honest complexity if I Were- 
is not a matter for regret. It is the 
artificial complications with which we 
daily surround ourselves that embar- 
rass our lives. We are afraid to be 
honest; it does not seem to us to be 
the best policy. We are afraid to like 
what we like for fear it is not what 
we ought to like. The simple people 
are those who have confidence in their 
own instincts, or, as Herbert Spencer 
would have said, who do not have to 
vindicate the veracity of their primi- 
tive convictions. 

Knowledge is too widely dissemi- 
nated for individual comfort. We 
have too many sources of informa- 
tion, too many Sunday Supplements, 
too many Answers to Correspondents, 
too many columns of What Men 
Ought to Wear. Why, I learned the 
other day that "no gentleman could 
hope to find tasteful cravats or indeed 
anything individual and desirable in 
men's furnishings and neck-wear at 
the retail haberdashers; he must have 
them made to order to match his 

263 



If I Were— suit" ! And I had been gazing admir- 
ingly at these articles as displayed in 
the shop-windows; and no doubt some 
misguided reader hereof has bought 
and is at this moment wearing, in sub- 
lime ignorance of his mistake and no 
doubt with some pride in his taste, a 
necktie (which he does not even know 
enough to know should not be called a 
necktie) bought at a haberdasher's! 
Of course, now that I have told him of 
his benighted condition he will find a 
new complexity added to his life. He 
will perhaps continue to frequent the 
gentleman's furnishing-goods depart- 
ment, but he will sidle in when I am 
not looking; and if I come upon him 
suddenly he will assume a wearied air 
as if he were waiting for his wife at 
the dress-goods counter — buying a 
dress she doesn't like because her 
dressmaker told her "it is all the 
rage." 

I have always held the doctrine of 
total depravity responsible for the 
world's loss of confidence in itself. 
Now of course someone will suggest 

264 



that this doctrine might be an effect If I Were- 
rather than a cause; but if doctrines 
are merely effects, what is to become 
of religion? I am disposed therefore 
to maintain that the belief in total de- 
pravity — or as the Confession of 
Faith puts it, "the original corruption 
whereby we are utterly indisposed, 
disabled and made opposite to all 
good and wholly inclined to all evil, 
dead in sin and wholly defiled in all 
the faculties and parts of soul and 
body" — is calculated to weaken one's 
confidence in one's self, to make a man 
wobbly not only on his moral legs but 
in matters of taste, if indeed morals 
are not also matters of taste. How 
can a man who is dead in sin and 
wholly defiled in all the faculties and 
parts of his soul and body be expected 
to trust his own judgment? Is it not 
the most natural thing in the world 
that he should ask somebody else? 
And even here his original corruption 
whereby he is utterly indisposed, dis- 
abled and made opposite to all good 
and wholly inclined to all evil, is likely 

265 



If I Were— to lead him astray. Ten chances to 
one he asks some other man instead 
of consulting his wife. 

And out of all these complexities 
that have been ages in the making we 
are asked to evolve simplicity! How 
can women be upright when men have 
sought out so many inventions ? The 
more ways you devise for making 
money the more ways they must de- 
vise for spending it. Not one person 
in a thousand does one-tenth of the 
things he does because he likes to do 
them or because he thinks the doing 
of them will make him happy. He 
does them because other people do 
them. Did people cease to eat with 
their knives or to drink their tea from 
their saucers because they found it 
more convenient to do otherwise? 
Were we driven to the use of finger- 
bowls because we couldn't get on 
without them? Did you stop eating 
corn pone and pickled pork and lye- 
hominy because you ceased to like 
them? We have been told that the 
male New Englander no longer has 

266 



pie for breakfast. Do you suppose he if I Were- 
gave it up because he wanted to, or 
because his wife read in "The Care of 
the Body" that baldness could be 
cured by the no-breakfast plan? 

No, very few of us do as we please 
or even as we think best; we do not 
have what we want even when we 
think we know what it is; but most 
of us, according to our ability and con- 
science, take what we can get. We all 
have a theory that we are the victims 
of necessity. We speak of "an inde- 
pendent fortune"; "if I were worth 
so and so," we say, and make the good 
example we intend to set when we 
have got it an excuse for all sorts of 
servile practices in the getting. We 
are afraid to call our souls our own, as 
long as they are all we have; but we 
all mean to bring suit to quiet title 
when we have made money enough to 
pay the costs. 

I don't know of course how it may 
be with the rest of you, but I am well 
aware that I cannot make my life sim- 
ple because I am a simpleton. I am 

267 



if I Were— morally certain that I could success- 
fully run the diocese of Bishop J. and 
the bank for Mr. P. and the railroad 
for Supt. B., tell Mr. H. exactly how 
to spend his money and even success- 
fully adjust the love affairs of Dr. T. 
And yet I, who stand ready and will- 
ing to do all of these things, am un- 
able to make my dressmaker, who is 
a meek-appearing little woman, put a 
watch-pocket in my dress. I have al- 
ways tried to keep a brave front but I 
fairly shrivel up with mortified humil- 
ity when the young woman behind the 
counter looks me over contemptu- 
ously from under her leaning tower of 
hair and informs me that "there is no 
call whatever" for the thing I have 
just called for. And I am almost 
ready to venture the assertion that 
there is not a person who would be 
willing to confess his real taste in 
literature, to tell, not what he likes 
perhaps, but what he doesn't like. 

Now how can people be simple 
when they live in constant dread of 
detection? We are not striving to 

268 



hide our guilt but our innocence. And if I Were— 
right here I should like to inquire why 
a thorough knowledge of good is 
rather patronizingly referred to as in- 
nocence, and an intimate and exten- 
sive acquaintance with evil is called 
"a knowledge of the world"? It seems 
to me that there is about as much 
good as evil in the world, and if the 
Westminster Confession of Faith as 
heretofore quoted is correct, the 
knowledge of evil comes to us rather 
naturally and therefore does not en- 
title us to great credit, while it must 
be uphill work and require some con- 
siderable industry, at least for a Cal- 
vinist, to acquire any knowledge of 
good. If that which is difficult of at- 
tainment is valuable, then being good, 
in other words innocent, ought to be 
more highly esteemed than sophisti- 
cation. Yet very few of us, very few 
men at least, take pride in being con- 
sidered innocent, however much they 
may resent being found guilty. 

I have often wondered how I 
should feel if I were Mr. Rockefeller 

269 



if I Were— and had all the moral health-officers of 
the country sniffing around my prem- 
ises to discover whether my money 
was good enough to convert the 
heathen. Now if the heathen were to 
send a hundred thousand dollars to 
the Board of Home Missions to con- 
vert Mr. Rockefeller I should consider 
it their duty to take it and make the 
attempt. I am afraid they would not 
succeed, but it would not, in my opin- 
ion, be because the money was tainted 
but because there was not enough 
of it. 

Talking of tainted money, what 
are you good men going to do about 
the money paid into the city treasury 
for saloon licenses ? Aren't you afraid 
it is tainted? I mean of course those 
of you that think the saloon is very 
bad for men but good for business. 

The question of what money has 
been doing before it comes to us has 
about as much to do with our duty 
concerning it as our condition in a 
previous incarnation has to do with 
our duty in the present. If I were a 

270 



college president I wouldn't go about if I Were- 
coaxing for ill-gotten gain; I should 
try to make my institution stand for 
everything that seemed to me pro- 
gressive, and if anybody offered me 
assistance I should take it for granted 
that my methods met with his ap- 
proval no matter what his own might 
have been, and I should take great 
pleasure in rescuing his millions from 
misuse and devoting them to my own 
wise purposes. 

Men have nervous prostration from 
trying to improve their circumstances, 
but women have it from trying to im- 
prove themselves. Of course no wo- 
man likes to do what men don't like 
to have her do, and how is sfre to find 
out what they like if not by observing 
what they do and doing what they 
like? For a woman to join a club, for 
instance, merely because she enjoyed 
it would be inexcusable. 

I don't think women in general ex- 
pect a man to know the object of a 
woman's club. But of course if he sets 
out to tell them what it is for, they 

271 



if I Were— are naturally interested and some gf 
them are anxious to know. Now if 
Mr. Cleveland had undertaken to tell 
what men's clubs are for, there would 
have been some propriety in it since 
women have often wondered about 
this. But when an ex-president of 
the United States tells us that we or- 
ganized clubs "to retaliate in kind," 
we begin to feel that we have a griev- 
ance, although we never dreamed of 
it until he made the suggestion. Per- 
sonally I have never heard a woman 
make the slightest objection to her 
husband belonging to a club. It may 
keep him from home now and then, 
but women love peace and they would 
never make trouble about a little thing 
like that. Mr. Cleveland warned us 
that if we attended clubs to punish 
men for attending clubs the result 
would be that men would attend more 
clubs. Now the natural conclusion 
from this would be that men like to 
have women attend clubs. 

Even Mr. Cleveland had no objec- 
tion to women organizing for philan- 

272 



thropic, moral and religious purposes; if i Were— 
but if women are held up much longer 
to these high standards they will have 
to form clubs as useless as men's for 
relaxation from high moral tension. 
If I were a doctor, by the way, I 
should cure nervous prostration in 
women by suggestion. That is, I 
should suggest that when a woman 
has improved her mind to a point 
where she cannot see a joke she 
should call a halt. I am a great be- 
liever in curing other people's ills by 
suggestion. That is the reason I have 
made so many in this paper. 



273 



NOV 20 1911 



One copy del to Cat. Div. 
DEC 12 »»" 



%m 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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